1399 – Henry Bolingbroke became the King of England as Henry IV.
1777 – The Congress of the United States moved to York, PA, due to advancing British forces.
1787 – The Columbia left Boston and began the trip that would make it the first American vessel to sail around the world.
1846 – Dr. William Morton performed a painless tooth extraction after administering ether to a patient.
1861 – Chewing gum tycoon William Wrigley, Jr. was born.
1868 – Spain’s Queen Isabella was deposed and fled to France.
1882 – In Appleton, WI, the world’s first hydroelectric power plant began operating.
1927 – George Herman “Babe” Ruth hit his 60th homerun of the season. He broke his own record with the homerun. The record stood until 1961 when Roger Maris broke the record.
1930 – “Death Valley Days” was heard for the first time on the NBC Blue radio network.
1935 – “The Adventures of Dick Tracey” debuted on Mutual Radio Network.
1935 – “Porgy and Bess” premiered in Boston.
1938 – The Munich Conference ended with a decision to appease Adolf Hitler. Britain, and France allowed Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to be annexed by the Nazis.
1939 – “Captain Midnight” was heard for the first time on the Mutual Radio Network.
1946 – An international military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found 22 top Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes.
1947 – The World Series was televised for the first time. The sponsors only paid $65,000 for the entire series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees.
1949 – The Berlin Airlift came to an end. The airlift had taken 2.3 million tons of food into the western sector despite the Soviet blockade.
1951 – “The Red Skelton Show” debuted on NBC-TV.
1954 – The U.S. Navy commissioned the Nautilus submarine at Groton, CT. It was the first atomic-powered vessel. The submarine had been launched on January 21, 1954.
1954 – Julie Andrews made her first Broadway appearance in “The Boy Friend”.
1962 – James Meredith succeeded in registering at the University of Mississippi. It was his fourth attempt to register.
1963 – The Soviet Union publicly declared itself on the side of India in their dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir.
1966 – Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach were released at midnight from Spandau prison after completing their 20-year sentences. Speer was the Nazi minister of armaments and von Schirach was the founder of Hitler Youth.
1971 – The Soviet Union and the United States signed pacts that were aimed at avoiding an accidental nuclear war.
1971 – A committee of nine people was organized to investigate the prison riot at Attica, NY. 10 hostages and 32 prisoners were killed when National Guardsmen stormed the prison on September 13, 1971.
1976 – California enacted the Natural Death Act of California. The law was the first example of right-to-die legislation in the U.S.
1980 – Israel issued its new currency, the shekel, to replace the pound.
1983 – The first AH-64 Apache attack helicopter was rolled out by McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Company.
1982 – “Cheers” began an 11-year run on NBC-TV.
1984 – Mike Witt became only the 11th pitcher to throw a perfect game in major league baseball.
1984 – “Doonesbury” by Garry Trudeau returned. The comic strip had not been printed in nearly 20 months.
1986 – The U.S. released accused Soviet spy Gennadiy Zakharov, one day after the Nicholas Daniloff had been released by the Soviets.
1987 – Mikhail S. Gorbachev retired President Andrei A. Gromyko from the Politburo and fired other old-guard leaders in a shake-up at the Kremlin.
1989 – Thousands of East Germans began emigrating under an accord between the NATO nations and the Soviet Union.
1989 – Non-Communist Cambodian guerrillas claimed that they had captured 3 towns and 10 other positions from the residing government forces.
1990 – The Soviet Union and South Korea opened diplomatic relations.
1991 – Haiti’s first freely elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown by Brigadier General Raoul Cedras. Aristide was later returned to power.
1992 – George Brett of the Kansas City Royals reached his 3,000th career hit during a game against the California Angels.
1992 – Moscow banks distributed privatization vouchers aimed at turning millions of Russians into capitalists.
1993 – U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell retired.
1994 – The space shuttle Endeavor took off on an 11-day mission. Part of the mission was to use a radar instrument to map remote areas of the Earth.
1997 – France’s Roman Catholic Church apologized for its silence during the persecution and deportation of Jews the pro-Nazi Vichy regime.
1998 – Gov. Pete Wilson of California signed a bill into law that defined “invasion of privacy as trespassing with the intent to capture audio or video images of a celebrity or crime victim engaging in a personal of family activity.” The law went into effect January 1, 1999.
1999 – The San Francisco Giants played the Los Angeles Dodgers in the last baseball game to be played at Candlestick Park (3Com Park). The Dodgers won 9-4.
1999 – In Tokaimura, Japan, radiation escaped a nuclear facility after workers accidentally set off an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction.
2014 – Amazon filed for a patent for a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) configured to autonomously deliver items to customers. The patent was related to Amazon’s plan for their Prime Air service.
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