1322 - Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeats King Edward II of England at Byland, forcing Edward to accept Scotland's independence.
1582 - Because of the implementation of the Gregorian calendar this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
1586 - Mary I of Scotland goes on trial for conspiracy against Elizabeth I of England.
1656 - Massachusetts enacts the first punitive legislation against the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The marriage of church-and-state in Puritanism makes them regard the ritual-free Quakers as spiritually apostate and politically subversive.
1758 - Seven Years' War: Austria defeats Prussia at the Battle of Hochkirk
1773 - The first recorded Ministry of Education, the Komisja Edukacji Narodowej (Polish for Commission of National Education), is formed in Poland.
1773 - American Revolutionary War: The United Kingdom's East India Company tea ships' cargo are burned at Annapolis, Maryland.
1789 - George Washington proclaims the first Thanksgiving Day.
1805 - Battle of Elchingen, France defeats Austria
1806 - Battle of Jena-Auerstädt France defeats Prussia
1834 - In Philadelphia, Whigs and Democrats stage a gun, stone and brick battle for control of a Moyamensing Township election, resulting in one death, several injuries, and the burning down of a block of buildings.
1840 - Maronite leader Bashir II surrenders to the British forces and goes into exile in Malta.
1843 - The British arrest Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell for conspiracy.
1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Bristoe Station
1867 - The 15th and last Shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate resigns in Japan.
1882 - University of the Punjab is founded in present day Pakistan.
1884 - George Eastman patents paper-strip photographic film.
1888 - Louis Le Prince films first motion picture: Roundhay Garden Scene.
1910 - English aviator Claude Grahame-White lands his Farman biplane on Executive Avenue (now Pennsylvania Avenue) near the White House.
1912 - While campaigning in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, former president Theodore Roosevelt is shot by saloonkeeper John Schrank. With a fresh flesh wound and the bullet still in him, Roosevelt still delivers his scheduled speech.
1913 - Senghenydd Colliery Disaster, the United Kingdom's worst coal mining accident, which claimed 439 lives.
1916 - Sophomore tackle and guard Paul Robeson is excluded from the Rutgers football team when Washington and Lee University refused to play against a black person.
1916 - The Perm State University was founded in Russia.
1920 - Part of Petsamo province is ceded by Soviet Union to Finland.
1925 - Anti-French uprising in Damascus (French inhabitants flee)
1926 - The children's book Winnie-the-Pooh, by A.A. Milne, is first published.
1933 - Nazi Germany withdraws from The League of Nations.
1939 - German U-Boat U-47 sinks British battleship HMS Royal Oak.
1942 - A German U-boat sinks the ferry SS Caribou, killing 137.
1943 - Prisoners at the Sobibor death camp in Poland revolt, resulting in the death of 11 SS. About half of the camp's 600 prisoners escape; about 50 survive the war.
1943 - U.S. 8th Air Force loses 60 B-17 Flying Fortresses during an assault on Schweinfurt.
1947 - Chuck Yeager flies a Bell X-1 faster than the speed of sound, the first man to do so in level flight.
1949 - Eleven leaders of the U.S. Communist Party are convicted, after a nine-month trial, of conspiring to advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.
1949 - Chinese Red Army occupies Canton (Guangzhou).
1957 - Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first Canadian monarch to open the Parliament of Canada with the Speech from the Throne.
1958 - The U.S. conducts an underground nuclear weapon test at the Nevada Test Site.
1958 - The District of Columbia Bar Association votes to accept black Americans as members.
1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis begins: A U-2 flight over Cuba takes photos of Soviet nuclear weapons being installed.
1964 - Leonid Brezhnev becomes general secretary of the CPSU and leader of the Soviet Union, ousting Nikita Khrushchev.
1964 - American civil rights movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr becomes the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
1966 - The city of Montreal inaugurates the Montreal Metro.
1967 - Vietnam War: Folk singer Joan Baez is arrested in a blockade of the military induction center in Oakland, California.
1968 - Vietnam War: 27 soldiers are arrested at the Presidio in San Francisco for their peaceful protest of stockade conditions and the Vietnam War.
1968 - Vietnam War: The United States Department of Defense announces that the United States Army and United States Marines will be sending about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours.
1968 - First live telecast from a manned U.S. spacecraft Apollo 7.
1968 - A 6.8 earthquake destroys the Australian town of Meckering, and also ruptures all major roads and railways nearby.
1968 - Jim Hines of the USA becomes the first man ever to break the ten second barrier in the 100 metres Olympic final at Mexico City with a time of 9.95 sec. He would be the only man to do so until 1983.
1968 - The rebuilt Euston railway station in London is opened.
1969 - The United Kingdom introduces the 50p (fifty-pence) coin, replacing the ten-shilling note, in anticipation of the decimalisation of the currency in 1971.
1973 - Thailand's University Students, over 100,000 people, protested for a democratic government; 77 are killed and 857 injured by the soldiers. HM the King and his mother broadcasted live on television to ask both sides to stop.
1979 - The first Gay Rights March on Washington, D.C., the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, demands "an end to all social, economic, judicial, and legal oppression of lesbian and gay people," draws 200,000 people.
1981 - Citing official misconduct in the investigation and trial, Amnesty International charges the U.S. government with holding Richard Marshall of the American Indian Movement as a political prisoner.
1981 - Vice President Hosni Mubarak is elected President of Egypt one week after Anwar Sadat was assassinated.
1982 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan proclaims a War on Drugs.
1994 - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
1998 - Eric Robert Rudolph is charged with 6 bombings including the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, Georgia.
2012 - Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner becomes the first person to break sound barrier without mechanical assistance during a record space dive out of the Red Bull Stratos helium-filled balloon from 24 miles (39 kilometers) over Roswell, New Mexico in the United States.
