1653 New Amsterdam becomes a city, later renamed New York City.

1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the Mexican–American War. Mexico loses 55 percent of its territory to the US, including California, Nevada and Utah in exchange for $15 million.

1880 SS Strathleven arrives in London with first shipment of frozen Australian mutton.

1887 First Groundhog Day observed at Gobbler's Knob, Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

1901 Queen Victoria's funeral takes place in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, England.

1943 German 6th Army surrenders after the Battle of Stalingrad in a major turning point in Europe during World War II

1944 Allied troops 1st set foot on Japanese territory.

1954 President Eisenhower announces the detonation of the world's 1st hydrogen bomb (tested in 1952)

1962 8 of 9 planets align for 1st time in 400 years.

1972 Angry demonstrators burn the British Embassy in Dublin to the ground in protest at the shooting dead of 13 people on 'bloody sunday'

1974 The F-16 Fighting Falcon flies for the first time.

1917 US ocean liner Housatonic is sunk by a German submarine, on the same day that US President Woodrow Wilson breaks off diplomatic relations with Germany.

1931 New Zealand's worst natural disaster, the Hawke's Bay earthquake, kills 256 and injures thousands, devastating Napier and the Hawke's Bay region.

1945 Almost 1,000 Flying Fortresses drop 3,000 tons of bombs on Berlin.

1945 WWII: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Yalta, Crimea, Soviet Union for the "Big Three" Yalta Conference.

1966 First soft landing on the Moon, by the Soviet spacecraft Luna 9

1938 Adolf Hitler seizes control of German army and puts Nazis in key posts.

1942 Clinton Pierce becomes 1st US general wounded in action in WW II

1945 Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin meet at Yalta in the Crimea to discuss the final phase of World War II

1974 Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb explodes on a bus in West Yorkshire, England, carrying British Army soldiers and some of their family members.

1985 Naval exercises cancelled when US refuses to tell NZ if nuclear weapons aboard USS Buchanan.

2004 Mark Zuckerberg launches Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room.

1597 A group of early Japanese Christians, known as the 26 Martyrs, are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society.

1782 British garrison in Menorca (western Mediterranean) surrenders to French and Spanish fleet as part of the American Revolutionary War.

1931 Malcolm Campbell sets world land speed record speed of 246.08 mph driving his famous Blue Bird car at Daytona Beach, Florida.

1945 US troops under General Douglas MacArthur enter Manila in the Philippines after a month-long battle, ending three years of Japanese military occupation.

1953 Sweet rationing imposed in WWII ends in Britain.

1969 United States population reaches 200 million.

1972 Two IRA members are killed when a bomb they were planting exploded prematurely.

1819 Stamford Raffles founds Singapore as a British trading post.

1919 The first day of the Weimar Republic which, because of its support of the Treaty of Versailles, does not receive proper allegiance from the German nation.

1952 Queen Elizabeth II succeeds King George VI to the British throne and is proclaimed Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

1964 France & Great-Britain sign accord over building channel tunnel.

1968 Former President Dwight Eisenhower shoots a hole-in-one.

1971 American astronaut Alan Shepard is the first to hit a golf ball on the Moon.

1971 The Irish Republican Army shoots and kills Gunner Robert Curtis, the first British soldier to die during the 'Troubles'

1783 Great Siege of Gibraltar, launched by France and Spain against the British colony during the American War of Independence is lifted after 3 years and 7 months.

1845 The Portland Vase, thought to date to the 1st century BC is shattered into more than 80 pieces by a drunken visitor to the British Museum.

1863 HMS Orpheus sinks off the coast of Auckland, New Zealand, killing 189

1991 Provisional Irish Republican Army launches a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street during a cabinet meeting in an attempt to assassinate UK Prime Minister John Major, injuring four people.

1992 The Maastricht Treaty is signed by 12 countries from the European Community (EC) to create the European Union (EU)

1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, is beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle at age 44 after being convicted of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth I in the Babington Plot.

1807 Battle of Eylau ends inconclusively between Napoleon's forces and the Russian Empire, first battle Napoleon isn't victorious.

1916 French cruiser "Admiral Charner" torpedoed off Syrian coast, kills 374

1942 Congress advises FDR that, Americans of Japanese descent should be locked up en masse so they wouldn't oppose the US war effort.

1944 German submarine U-762 sunk off Ireland by British forces with the loss of all 50 crewmen.

1960 Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issues an Order-in-Council stating that she and her family will be known as the House of Windsor and that her descendants will take the name "Mountbatten-Windsor"

1775 British Parliament declares Massachusetts Colony in rebellion.

1941 Nazi collaborators destroy pro-Jewish café Alcazar Amsterdam (Alcazar refused to hang "No Entry for Jews" signs in front of cafe)

1944 U-734/U-238 sunk off Ireland.

1945 The Battle of the Atlantic: HMS Venturer sinks U-Boat 864 off the coast of Norway.

1986 Tomb of Tutanchamon's treasurer Maya found in Egypt.

1763 Treaty of Paris ends the French-Indian War, France agrees to surrender Canada to Great Britain.

1906 British battleship HMS Dreadnought launches after only 100 days and renders all other capital ships obsolete with its revolutionary design.

1916 Military conscription begins in Britain.

1933 Adolf Hitler proclaims end of Marxism.

1942 Glenn Miller and his Orchestra are awarded the first-ever gold record for selling 1 million copies of "Chattanooga Choo Choo"

1944 U-666/U-545/U-283 sink off Ireland.

1962 USSR swaps spy Francis Gary Power to US for Rudolph Abel.

1964 Australian destroyer HMAS Voyager sinks after colliding with aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne, killing 82

1972 Two British soldiers are killed in a land mine attack near Cullyhanna, County Armagh; an IRA member is shot dead during an exchange of gunfire with RUC officers.

1975 The Provisional Irish Republican Army agrees to a truce and ceasefire with the British government and the Northern Ireland Office; Seven "incident centres" are established in nationalist areas to monitor the ceasefire.

1996 A bomb explodes in Docklands area of London, ending the 17-month ceasefire; James McArdle is eventually found guilty and jailed for 25 years.

1554 Queen of England for nine days, Lady Jane Grey aged about 17 is executed for treason under Mary I at the Tower of London.

1915 Adolf Hitler receives the relatively common Iron Cross second class for bravery in World War I

1915 World War I: Kaiser Wilhelm approves the strategic bombing of London's docks.

1921 Winston Churchill becomes British Minister of Colonies.

1942 German battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen escape from Brest to Germany in a dash up the English Channel.

1988 US Navy frigate USS Yorktown bumped by Russian frigate Bezzavetny in the Black Sea in dispute over right of innocent passage.

1989 Loyalist paramilitary group kill Pat Finucane, a Belfast lawyer who represented republican hunger striker Bobby Sands, while he is having dinner with family.

1999 US President Bill Clinton acquitted by the Senate in his impeachment trial.

2013 North Korea allegedly conducts its third nuclear test, claiming it is a nuclear device that can be weaponized.

1910 Typhoid Mary [Mary Mallon] is freed from her first periods of forced isolation and goes on to cause several further outbreaks of typhoid in the New York area.

1914 Four-year old Charlotte May Pierstorff mailed by train from Grangeville, Idaho to her grandparents’ house 73 miles away in most famous 'child in the post' instance.

1915 British fleet opens fire on Dardanelles coast.

1933 Hermann Göring bans all Catholic newspapers in Cologne, claiming that Catholics illegally engage in politics.

1942 An estimated 150 Japanese warplanes attack the Australian city of Darwin.

1942 FDR orders the detention and internment of all Japanese Americans on the West Coast.

1944 U-264 sinks off Ireland.

1945 980 Japanese soldiers reportedly killed by crocodiles in two days on Ramree Island, Burma.

1945 US 5th Fleet launches invasion of Iwo Jima against the Japanese with 30,000 US Marines.

1959 USAF rocket-powered rail sled attains Mach 4.1 (4970 kph), at Holloman AFB, New Mexico.

1964 UK flies ½ ton of Beatles wigs to the US

1873 British Naval Officer John Moresby is the first European to discover Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, claims it for the United Kingdom.

1938 Adolf Hitler announces his support for Japan during the Sino-Japanese War.

1938 UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden resigns, stating Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain has appeased Nazi Germany.

1942 Lt E H O'Hare single-handedly shoots down 5 Japanese heavy bombers, becomes America's first World War II flying ace.

1944 Battle of Eniwetok: US forces take Enewetak Atoll at the cost of 37 Americans killed or missing and 94 wounded; Japanese losses are 800 dead and 23 prisoners.

1947 Earl Mountbatten of Burma is appointed the last viceroy of India to oversee the move to independence.

1857 US issues flying eagle cents.

1916 Battle of Verdun begins with a German offensive, leads to an estimated 1 million casualties, and becomes the longest battle of the entire war (9 months)

1917 British troopship SS Mendi sinks off Isle of Wight, 646 die.

1958 British artist Gerald Holtom designs Nuclear Disarmament logo, based on blended semaphore signals for the letters N and D; it later became an international peace symbol.

1964 UK flies 24,000 rolls of Beatles wallpaper to US

1973 Israeli fighter jets shoot down Libyan commercial airliner that strayed into restricted airspace over occupied Sinai Penninsula, killing 108

1995 RAF pilot Jo Salter is the first woman to fly a Tornado fighter jet.

1774 British House of Lords rules authors do not have perpetual copyright.

1797 The Last Invasion of Britain, launched by the French during the Revolutionary Wars, begins near Fishguard, Wales.

1825 Russia and Britain establish the Alaska-Canada boundary.

1856 Republican Party holds its first national meeting in Pittsburgh.

1915 Germany begins "unrestricted" submarine war.

1916 The House-Grey Memorandum, drafted by US and Britain, states: 'Should the Allies accept [the American idea of a conference to end the war] and should Germany refuse it, the United States would "probably" enter the war against Germany'

1940 German air force sinks 2 German destroyers, killing 578

1941 Arthur "Bomber" Harris becomes British Air Marshal.

1967 25,000 US and South Vietnamese troops launch Operation Junction City against the Viet Cong. Largest US airborne assault since World War II