0527 – Justinianus became the emperor of Byzantium.

1572 – The Sea Beggars under Guillaume de la Marck landed in Holland and captured the small town of Briel.

1578 – William Harvey of England discovered blood circulation.

1621 – The Plymouth, MA, colonists created the first treaty with Native Americans.

1724 – Jonathan Swift published Drapier’s letters.

1748 – The ruins of Pompeii were found.

1778 – Oliver Pollock, a New Orleans businessman, created the “$” symbol.

1789 – The U.S. House of Representatives held its first full meeting in New York City. Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania was elected the first House Speaker.

1793 – In Japan, the volcano Unsen erupted killing about 53,000.

1826 – Samuel Mory patented the internal combustion engine.

1853 – Cincinnati became the first U.S. city to pay fire fighters a regular salary.

1863 – The first wartime conscription law went into effect in the U.S.

1864 – The first travel accident policy was issued to James Batterson by the Travelers Insurance Company.

1865 – At the Battle of Five Forks in Petersburg, VA, Gen. Robert E. Lee began his final offensive.

1867 – Blacks voted in the municipal election in Tuscumbia, AL.

1867 – The International Exhibition opened in Paris.

1867 – Singapore, Penang & Malakka became British crown colonies.

1868 – In Virginia, The Hampton Institute was established.

1872 – The first edition of “The Standard” was published.

1873 – The British White Star steamship Atlantic sank off Nova Scotia killing 547.

1873 – Mehmed Kemals play “Vatan” premiered in Constantinople.

1881 – Anti-Jewish riots took place in Jerusalem.

1881 – Kingdom post office in Netherlands opened.

1889 – The first dishwashing machine was marketed (in Chicago).

1891 – The London-Paris telephone connection opened.

1891 – The William Wrigley Jr. Company was founded in Chicago, IL. The company is most known for its Juicy Fruit gum.

1905 – The British East African Protectorate became the colony of Kenya.

1905 – Paris and Berlin were linked by telephone.

1916 – The first U.S. national women’s swimming championships were held.

1918 – England’s Royal Flying Corps was replaced by the Royal Air Force.

1924 – Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison for high treason in relation to the “Beer Hall Putsch.”

1924 – Imperial Airways was formed in Britain.

1927 – The first automatic record changer was introduced by His Master’s Voice.

1928 – China’s Chiang Kai-shek began attacking communists.

1929 – Louie Marx introduced the Yo-Yo.

1930 – Leo Hartnett of the Chicago Cubs broke the altitude record for a catch by catching a baseball dropped from the Goodyear blimp 800 feet over Los Angeles, CA.

1931 – An Earthquake devastated Managua Nicaragua killing 2,000.

1931 – Jackie Mitchell became the first female in professional baseball when she signed with the Chattanooga Baseball Club.

1933 – Nazi Germany began the persecution of Jews by boycotting Jewish businesses.

1935 – The first radio tube to be made of metal was announced.

1937 – Aden became a British colony.

1938 – The first commercially successful fluorescent lamps were introduced.

1938 – The Baseball Hall of Fame opened in Cooperstown, NY.

1939 – The U.S. recognized the Franco government in Spain at end of Spanish civil war.

1941 – The first contract for advertising on a commercial FM radio station began on W71NY in New York City.

1945 – U.S. forces invaded Okinawa during World War II. It was the last campaign of World War II.

1946 – Weight Watchers was formed.

1946 – A tidal wave (tsunami) struck the Hawaiian Islands killing more than 170 people.

1948 – The Berlin Airlift began.

1949 – “Happy Pappy” premiered. It was the first all-black-cast variety show.

1950 – Italian Somalia became a United Nations trust territory under Italian administration.

1952 – The Big Bang theory was proposed in “Physical Review” by Alpher, Bethe & Gamow.

1953 – The U.S. Congress created the Department of Health Education and Welfare.

1954 – The U.S. Air Force Academy was formed in Colorado.

1955 – “One Man’s Family” was seen on TV for the final time after a six-year run on NBC-TV.

1960 – France exploded 2 atom bombs in the Sahara Desert.

1960 – The U.S. launched TIROS-1. It was the first weather satellite.

1963 – Workers of the International Typographical Union ended their strike that had closed nine New York City newspapers. The strike ended 114 days after it began on December 8, 1962.

1963 – The Soap operas “General Hospital” and “Doctors” premiered on television.

1970 – The U.S. Army charged Captain Ernest Medina in the My Lai massacre.

1970 – U.S. President Nixon signed the bill, the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, that banned cigarette advertisements to be effective on January 1, 1971.

1971 – The United Kingdom lifted all restrictions on gold ownership.

1972 – North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops renewed their offensive in South Vietnam.

1973 – Japan allowed its citizens to own gold.

1976 – Apple Computer began operations.

1979 – Iran was proclaimed to be an Islamic Republic by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after the fall of the Shah.

1980 – A failed assassination attempt against Iraqi vice-premier Tariq Aziz occurred.

1982 – The U.S. transferred the Canal Zone to Panama.

1983 – New York Islander Mike Bossy became the first National Hockey League (NHL) player to score 60 goals in 3 consecutive seasons.

1985 – World oil prices dropped below $10 a barrel.

1986 – The U.S. submarine Nathaniel Green ran aground in the Irish Sea.

1987 – Steve Newman became the first man to walk around the world. The walk was 22,000 miles and took 4 years.

1987 – U.S. President Reagan told doctors in Philadelphia, “We’ve declared AIDS public health enemy No. 1.”

1991 – Iran released British hostage Roger Cooper after 5 years.

1991 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that jurors could not be barred from serving due to their race.

1991 – The Warsaw Pact was officially dissolved.

1992 – Players began the first strike in the 75-year history of the National Hockey League (NHL).

1996 – U.S. President Bill Clinton threw out the first ball preceding a game between the Kansas City Royals and the Baltimore Orioles.

1997 – David Carradine received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1998 – A federal judge dismissed the Paula Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit against U.S. President Clinton saying that the claims fell “far short” of being worthy of a trial.

1999 – In Zhytomyr, Ukraine, Anatoliy Onoprienko was sentenced to death for the deaths of 52 men, women and children. 43 of the killings occurred in a 6-month period.

1999 – The Canadian territory of Nunavut was created. It was carved from the eastern part of the Northwest Territories and covered about 772,000 square miles.

2001 – China began holding 24 crewmembers of a U.S. surveillance plane. The EP-3E U.S. Navy crew had made an emergency landing after an in-flight collision with a Chinese fighter jet. The Chinese pilot was missing and presumed dead. The U.S. crew was released on April 11, 2001.

2001 – Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was arrested on corruption charges after a 26-hour standoff with the police at his Belgrade villa.

2003 – North Korea test-fired an anti-ship missile off its west coast.

2003 – Jason Mewes was ordered to complete drug rehabilitation or face five years in jail stemming from a drug conviction in 1999.

2004 – U.S. President George W. Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. The bill made it a crime to harm a fetus during an assault on a pregnant woman.

2004 – Gateway Inc. announced that it would be closing all of its 188 stores on April 9.

2009 – Albania and Croatia joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

2010 – The U.S. Congress cut Medicare reimbursements to physicians by 21%.

1741 – Frederick II of Prussia defeated Maria Theresa’s forces at Mollwitz and conquered Silesia.

1790 – The U.S. patent system was established when U.S. President George Washington signed the Patent Act of 1790 into law.

1809 – Austria declared war on France and its forces entered Bavaria.

1814 – Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Toulouse by the British and the Spanish. The defeat led to his abdication and exile to Elba.

1825 – The first hotel opened in Hawaii.

1849 – Walter Hunt patented the safety pin. He sold the rights for $100.

1854 – The constitution of the Orange Free State in south Africa was proclaimed.

1862 – Union forces began the bombardment of Fort Pulaski in Georgia along the Tybee River.

1865 – During the American Civil War, at Appomattox, General Robert E. Lee issued his last order.

1866 – The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was incorporated.

1902 – South African Boers accepted British terms of surrender.

1912 – The Titanic set sail from Southampton, England.

1916 – The Professional Golfers Association (PGA) held its first championship tournament.

1919 – In Mexico, revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata was killed by government troops.

1922 – The Genoa Conference opened. The meeting was used to discuss the reconstruction of Europe after World War I.

1925 – F. Scott Fitzgerald published “The Great Gatsby” for the first time.

1930 – The first synthetic rubber was produced.

1932 – Paul von Hindenburg was elected president of Germany with 19 million votes. Adolf Hitler came in second with 13 million votes.

1938 – Germany annexed Austria after Austrians had voted in a referundum to merge with Germany.

1941 – In World War II, U.S. troops occupied Greenland to prevent Nazi infiltration.

1941 – Ford Motor Co. became the last major automaker to recognize the United Auto Workers as the representative for its workers.

1944 – Russian troops recaptured Odessa from the Germans.

1945 – German Me 262 jet fighters shot down ten U.S. bombers near Berlin.

1953 – Warner Bros. released “House of Wax.” It was the first 3-D movie to be released by a major Hollywood studio.

1953 – Actress Hedy Lamarr became a U.S. citizen.

1959 – Japan’s Crown Prince Akihito married commoner Michiko Shoda.

1960 – The U.S. Senate passed the Civil Rights Bill.

1961 – Gary Player of South Africa became the first foreign golfer to win the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Georgia.

1963 – 129 people died when the nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher failed to surface off Cape Cod, MA.

1967 – The 13-day strike by the American Federation of Radio-TV Artists (AFTRA) came to an end less than two hours before the 39th Academy Awards presentation went on the air.

1968 – U.S. President Johnson replaced General Westmoreland with General Creighton Abrams in Vietnam.

1971 – The American table tennis team arrived in China. They were the first group of Americans officially allowed into China since the founding of the People Republic in 1949. The team had recieved the surprise invitation while in Japan for the 31st World Table Tennis Championship.

1972 – An earthquake in southern Iran killed more than 5,000 people.

1972 – The U.S. and the Soviet Union joined with 70 other nations in signing an agreement banning biological warfare.

1973 – In Switzerland, 108 people died when a plane crashed while attempting to land at Basel.

1974 – Yitzhak Rabin replaced resigning Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir. Meir resigned over differences within her Labor Party.

1980 – Spain and Britain agreed to reopen the border between Gibraltar and Spain. It had been closed since 1969.

1981 – Imprisoned IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected to the British Parliament.

1981 – The maiden launch of the space shuttle Columbia was cancelled because of a computer malfunction.

1984 – The U.S. Senate condemned the CIA mining of Nicaraguan harbors.

1988 – On Wall Street, 48 million shares of Navistar International stock changed hands in a single-block trade. It was the largest transaction ever executed on the New York Stock Exchange.

1990 – Three European hostages kidnapped at sea in 1987 by Palestinian extremists were released in Beirut.

1992 – A bomb exploded in London’s financial district. The bomb, set off by the Irish Republican Army, killed three people and injured 91.

1992 – Outside Needles, CA, comedian Sam Kinison was killed when a pickup truck slammed into his car on a desert road between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

1992 – In Los Angeles, financier Charles Keating Jr. was sentenced to nine years in prison for swindling investors when his Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed. The convictions were later overturned.

1993 – South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani was assassinated.

1994 – NATO warplanes launched air strikes for the first time on Serb forces that were advancing on the Bosnian Muslim town of Gordazde. The area had been declared a U.N. safe area.

1996 – U.S. President Clinton vetoed a bill that would have outlawed a technique used to end pregnancies in their late stages.

1997 – Rod Steiger received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1998 – Negotiators reached a peace accord on governing British ruled Northern Ireland. Britain’s direct rule was ended.

1999 – The http://www.June4.org web site was launched by Chinese dissidents and human rights activists to promote their campaign for democracy in China.

2000 – Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported irregularities in the voting in Georgia’s presidential election on April 9. President Eduard Shevardnadze was reelected to a new five-year term.

2000 – Ken Griffey Jr. became the youngest player in baseball history to reach 400 home runs. He was 30 years, 141 days old.

2001 – Jane Swift took office as the first female governor of Massachusetts. She succeeded Paul Cellucci, who had resigned to become the U.S. ambassador to Canada.

2001 – The Netherlands legalized mercy killings and assisted suicide for patients with unbearable, terminal illness.

2002 – Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke before the U.S. Senate as a representative of the Israeli government. He warned that suicide bombers would spread to the U.S. if Israel was not allowed to finish its military offensive in the West Bank. Netanyahu also cited the goals of dismantling the terror regime and expelling Arafat from the region, ridding the Palestinian territories of terrorist weapons and establishing “physical barriers” to protect Israelis from future Palestinian attacks.

2009 – In Fiji, President Josefa Iloilo suspended the nation’s Constitution, dismissed all judges and constitutional appointees and assumed all governance in the country.

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