1095 - On the last day of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II appoints Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy and Count Raymond IV of Toulouse to lead the First Crusade to the Holy Land.
1443 - Skanderbeg and his forces liberate Kruja in Middle Albania and raise the Albanian flag.
1520 - After navigating through the South American strait, three ships under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reach the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.
1582 - In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespere and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage license.
1660 - At Gresham College, 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decide to found what is later known as the Royal Society.
1729 - Natchez Indians massacre 138 Frenchmen, 35 French women, and 56 children at Fort Rosalie, near the site of modern-day Natchez, Mississippi.
1814 - The Times in London is for the first time printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer, signaling the beginning of the availability of newspapers to a mass audience.
1821 - Panama Independence Day: Panama separates from Spain and joins Gran Colombia.
1862 - American Civil War: In the Battle of Cane Hill, Union troops under General John Blunt defeat General John Marmaduke's Confederates.
1893 - Women vote in a national election for the first time: the New Zealand general election.
1895 - The first American automobile race takes place over the 54 miles from Chicago's Jackson Park to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours.
1905 - Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Féin as a political party with the main aim of establishing a dual monarchy in Ireland.
1907 - In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theater.
1912 - Albania declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire.
1914 - World War I: Following a war-induced closure in July, the New York Stock Exchange re-opens for bond trading.
1918 - Bucovina voted for the union with the Kingdom of Romania.
1919 - Lady Astor is elected as a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. She is the first woman to sit as a British MP, although not the first to be elected
1920 - Kilmichael Ambush, Battle of the Irish War of Independence.
1929 - Ernie Nevers of the then Chicago Cardinals scores all the points in this game as the Cardinals defeat the Chicago Bears 40-6.
1942 - In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 491 people.
1964 - Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 4 probe toward Mars.
1964 - Vietnam War: National Security Council members agree to recommend that U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson adopt a plan for a two-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam.
1965 - Vietnam War: In response to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's call for "more flags" in Vietnam, Philippines President Elect Ferdinand Marcos announces he will send troops to help fight in South Vietnam.
1975 - East Timor declares its independence from Portugal.
1975 - As the World Turns and The Edge of Night, the final two American soap operas that had resisted going to pre-taped broadcasts, air their last live episodes.
1979 - The Mount Erebus disaster: An Air New Zealand DC-10 crashes into Mount Erebus on a sightseeing trip, killing all 257 people on board.
1982 - Representatives from 88 countries gather in Geneva to discuss world trade and ways to work toward aspects of free trade.
1984 - Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn are made Honorary Citizens of the United States.
1987 - South African Airways flight 295 crashes into the Indian Ocean, killing all 159 people on-board.
1991 - South Ossetia declares independence from Georgia.
1994 - Voters in Norway reject European Union membership (see Norwegian EU referendum, 1994).
1994 - In Portage, Wisconsin, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is clubbed to death by an inmate in the Columbia Correctional Institution gymnasium.
1997 - First public appearance of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group that fought for the independence of Kosovo from Serbia.
1998 - The people of Albania vote for their new Constitution in a referendum.
2000 - Ukrainian politician Oleksander Moroz begins the Cassette Scandal by publicly accusing President Leonid Kuchma of involvement in the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze.
2010 - WikiLeaks releases a collection of more than 250,000 American diplomatic cables, including 100,000 marked "secret" or "confidential".
