88 – King Henry III fled Paris after Henry of Guise triumphantly entered the city.

1780 – Charleston, South Carolina fell to British forces.

1847 – William Clayton invented the odometer.

1870 – Manitoba entered the Confederation as a Canadian province.

1881 – Tunisia, in North Africa became a French protectorate.

1885 – In the Battle of Batoche, French Canadians rebelled against the Canadian government.

1888 – Charles Sherrill of the Yale track team became the first runner to use the crouching start for a fast break in a foot race.

1926 – The airship Norge became the first vessel to fly over the North Pole.

1926 – In Britain, a general strike by trade unions ended. The strike began on May 3, 1926.

1937 – Britain’s King George VI was crowned at Westminster Abbey.

1940 – The Nazi conquest of France began with the German army crossing Muese River.

1942 – The Soviet Army launched its first major offensive of World War II and took Kharkov in the eastern Ukraine from the German army.

1943 – The Axis forces in North Africa surrendered during World War II.

1949 – The Soviet Union announced an end to the Berlin Blockade.

1950 – The American Bowling Congress abolished its white males-only membership restriction after 34 years.

1957 – A.J. Foyt won his first auto racing victory in Kansas City, MO.

1965 – West Germany and Israel exchanged letters establishing diplomatic relations.

1970 – Ernie Banks, of the Chicago Cubs, hit his 500th home run.

1975 – U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez was seized by Cambodian forces in international waters.

1978 – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that they would no longer exclusively name hurricanes after women.

1982 – South Africa unveiled a plan that would give voting rights to citizens of Asian and mixed-race descent, but not to blacks.

1984 – South African prisoner Nelson Mandela saw his wife for the first time in 22 years.

1999 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin dismissed Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and named Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin as his successor.

2002 – Former U.S. President Carter arrived in Cuba for a visit with Fidel Castro. It was the first time a U.S. head of state, in or out of office, had gone to the island since Castro’s 1959 revolution.

2003 – In Texas, fifty-nine Democratic lawmakers went into hiding over a dispute with Republican’s over a congressional redistricting plan.

2008 – In the U.S., the price for a one-ounce First-Class stamp increased from 41 to 42 cents.

2015 – It was announced that Verizon would be acquiring AOL.

0330 – Constantinople, previously the town of Byzantium, was founded.

1573 – Henry of Anjou became the first elected king of Poland.

1647 – Peter Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam to become governor.

1689 – French and English naval battle takes place at Bantry Bay.

1745 – French forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army at Fontenoy.

1792 – The Columbia River was discovered by Captain Robert Gray.

1812 – British prime Minster Spencer Perceval was shot by a bankrupt banker in the lobby of the House of Commons.

1816 – The American Bible Society was formed in New York City.

1857 – Indian mutineers seized Delhi from the British.

1858 – Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U.S. state.

1860 – Giuseppe Garibaldi landed at Marsala, Sicily.

1889 – Major Joseph Washington Wham takes charge of $28,000 in gold and silver to pay troops at various points in the Arizona Territory. The money was stolen in a train robbery.

1894 – Workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company in Illinois went on strike.

1910 – Glacier National Park in Montana was established.

1927 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded.

1934 – A severe two-day dust storm stripped the topsoil from the great plains of the U.S. and created a “Dust Bowl.” The storm was one of many.

1944 – A major offensive was launched by the allied forces in central Italy.

1947 – The creation of the tubeless tire was announced by the B.F. Goodrich Company.

1949 – Siam changed its name to Thailand.

1960 – Israeli soldiers captured Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires.

1967 – The siege of Khe Sanh ended.

1985 – More than 50 people died when a flash fire swept a soccer stadium in Bradford, England.

1995 – The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was extended indefinitely. The treaty limited the spread of nuclear material for military purposes.

1996 – An Atlanta-bound ValuJet DC-9 caught fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashed into the Florida Everglades. All 110 people on board were killed.

1997 – Garry Kasparov, world chess champion, lost his first ever multi-game match. He lost to IBM’s chess computer Deep Blue. It was the first time a computer had beaten a world-champion player.

1998 – India conducted its first underground nuclear tests, three of them, in 24 years. The tests were in violation of a global ban on nuclear testing.

1998 – A French mint produced the first coins of Europe’s single currency. The coin is known as the euro.

2001 – U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his decision to approve a 30-day delay of the execution of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh had been scheduled to be executed on May 16, 2001. The delay was because the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had failed to disclose thousands of documents to McVeigh’s defense team. (Oklahoma)

Last Updated: January 31, 2025

On May 8, 1792, Congress passed the second portion of the Militia Act, requiring that every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years, be enrolled in the militia.

Six days before, Congress had established the president’s right to call out the militia. The outbreak of Shay’s Rebellion, a protest against taxation and debt prosecution in western Massachusetts in 1786-87, had first convinced many Americans that the federal government should be given the power to put down rebellions within the states. The inability of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation to respond to the crisis was a major motivation for the peaceful overthrow of the government and the drafting of a new federal Constitution.

The Militia Act was tested shortly after its passage, when farmers in western Pennsylvania, angered by a federal excise tax on whiskey, attacked the home of a tax collector and then, with their ranks swollen to 6,000 camped outside Pittsburgh, threatened to march on the town. In response, President Washington, under the auspices of the Militia Act, assembled 15,000 men

Source: history.com

On the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, some 200 Sioux Native Americans, led by members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), occupy Wounded Knee, the site of the infamous 1890 massacre of 300 Sioux by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry. The AIM members, some of them armed, took 11 residents of the historic Oglala Sioux settlement hostage as local authorities and federal agents descended on the reservation.

AIM was founded in 1968 by Russell Means, Dennis Banks, and other Native leaders as a militant political and civil rights organization. From November 1969 to June 1971, AIM members occupied Alcatraz Island off San Francisco, saying they had the right to it under a treaty provision granting them unused federal land. In November 1972, AIM members briefly occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., to protest programs controlling reservation development. Then, in early 1973, AIM prepared for its dramatic occupation of Wounded Knee. In addition to its historical significance, Wounded Knee was one of the poorest communities in the United States and shared with the other Pine Ridge settlements some of the country’s lowest rates of life expectancy.

Source: history.com

0558 – The dome of the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople collapsed. It was immediately rebuilt as ordered by Justinian.

1274 – The Second Council of Lyons opened in France to regulate the election of the pope.

1429 – The English siege of Orleans was broken by Joan of Arc.

1525 – The German peasants’ revolt was crushed by the ruling class and church.

1663 – The first Theatre Royal was opened in London.

1763 – Indian chief Pontiac began all out war on the British in New York.

1789 – The first U.S. Presidential Inaugural Ball was held in New York City.

1800 – The U.S. Congress divided the Northwest Territory into two parts. The western part became the Indiana Territory and the eastern section remained the Northwest Territory.

1847 – The AMA (American Medical Association) was organized in Philadelphia, PA.

1898 – The first Intercollegiate Trapshooting Association meet was held in New Haven, CT.

1912 – Columbia University approved final plans for awarding the Pulitzer Prize in several categories.

1912 – The first airplane equipped with a machine gun flew over College Park, MD.

1915 – The Lusitania, a civilian ship, was sunk by a German submarine. 1,201 people were killed.

1926 – A U.S. report showed that one-third of the nation’s exports were motors.

1937 – The German Condor Legion arrived in Spain to assist Franco’s forces.

1939 – Germany and Italy announced a military and political alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.

1940 – Winston Churchill became British Prime Minister.

1942 – In the Battle of the Coral Sea, Japanese and American navies attacked each other with carrier planes. It was the first time in the history of naval warfare where two enemy fleets fought without seeing each other.

1943 – The last major German strongholds in North Africa, Tunis and Bizerte, fell to Allied forces.

1945 – Baseball owner Branch Rickey announced the organization of the United States Negro Baseball League. There were 6 teams.

1945 – Germany signed unconditional surrender ending World War II. It would take effect the next day.

1946 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corp. was founded. The company was later renamed Sony.

1951 – Russia was admitted to participate in the 1952 Olympic Games by the International Olympic Committee.

1954 – French Colonial Forces surrendered to the Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu after 55 days of fighting.

1954 – The United States and the United Kingdom rejected the Soviet Union’s bid to join NATO.

1958 – Howard Johnson set an aircraft altitude record in F-104.

1960 – Leonid Brezhnev became president of the Soviet Union.

1975 – U.S. President Ford declared an end to the Vietnam War.

1977 – Rookie Janet Guthrie set the fastest time on opening day of practice for the Indianapolis 500. Her time was 185.607.

1984 – A $180 million out-of-court settlement was announced in the Agent Orange class-action suit brought by Vietnam veterans who claimed they had suffered injury from exposure to the defoliant while serving in the armed forces.

1992 – A 203-year-old proposed constitutional amendment barring the U.S. Congress from giving itself a midterm pay raise was ratified as the 27th Amendment.

1994 – The Edvard Munch painting “The Scream” was recovered after being stolen 3 months earlier from an Oslo Museum. This version of “The Scream”, one of four different versions, was painted on paper.

1996 – The trial of Serbian police officer Dusan Tadic opened in the Netherlands. He was later convicted on murder-torture charges and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

1997 – A report released by the U.S. government said that Switzerland provided Nazi Germany with equipment and credit during World War II. Germany exchanged for gold what had been plundered or stolen. Switzerland did not comply with postwar agreements to return the gold.

1998 – Daimler-Benz bought Chrysler Corp. for close to $40 billion. It was the largest industrial merger on record.

1998 – Residents of London voted to elect their own mayor for the first time in history. The vote would take place in May 2000.

1999 – A jury ruled that “The Jenny Jones Show” and Warner Bros. were liable in the shooting death of Scott Amedure. He was killed by another guest on the show. The jury’s award was $25 million.

1999 – Jerry Moss received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1999 – In Belgrade, Yugoslavia, three Chinese citizens were killed and 20 were wounded when a NATO plane mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy.

1999 – In Guinea-Bissau, the government of President João Bernardo Vieira was ousted in a military coup.

2000 – Russian President Vladimir V. Putin named First Deputy Premier Mikhail Kasyanov as premier.

2003 – In Washington, DC, General Motors Corp. delivered six fuel cell vehicles to Capitol Hill for lawmakers and others to test drive during the next two years.

2003 – Roger Moore collapsed during a matinee performance of the Broadway comedy “The Play What I Wrote.” He finished the show after a 10-minute break. He was fitted with a pacemaker the following day.

2013 – The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 15,056.20. It was the first time it had closed over 15,000.