1814 Napoleonic Wars: Sixth Coalition forces march into Paris after defeating Napoleon.

1856 The Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain, France and the Kingdom of Sardinia sign the Treaty of Paris ending the Crimean War.

1867 The United States buys Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000 (109 million in 2018 dollars), roughly 2 cents an acre.

1939 Heinkel He 100 fighter sets a world airspeed record of 463 mph.

1945 World War II: a defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1 to Americans.

1969 Loyalists bomb water and electricity installations in Northern Ireland in the hope that the attacks would be blamed on the IRA and on elements of the civil rights movement, which was demanding an end to discrimination against Catholics.

1972 Northern Ireland's government and parliament are dissolved by the British government, and direct rule from Westminster is introduced.

1981 US President Ronald Reagan is shot and wounded in an assassination attempt by John Hinckley, three others are also wounded.

2023 Key figures in Artificial Intelligence including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak sign an open letter warning the race to develop AI systems is out of control and asking for a suspension of at least six months.

1814 Forces allied against Napoleon capture Paris.

1889 Eiffel Tower officially opens for dignitaries and an award ceremony in Paris, France; designed by Gustave Eiffel and built for the Exposition Universelle, at 300 meters high, it holds the record for the tallest man-made structure for 41 years.

1920 British Parliament accepts the Government of Ireland Act, known as the Fourth Home Rule Bill.

1939 Britain & France agree to support Poland if invaded by Germany.

1951 US tanks exceed 38° of latitude in Korea.

1971 William Calley sentenced to life for Mi Lai Massacre.

1972 Final day of the rum ration in the Royal Canadian Navy.

1979 The last British soldier leaves the Maltese Islands. Malta declares its Freedom Day (Jum il-Helsien).

1748 The ruins of Pompeii are rediscovered by Spaniard Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre.

1918 United Kingdom: the Royal Air Force is created from the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps.

1924 Adolf Hitler sentenced to 5 years labor for "Beer Hall Putsch" but General Ludendorff acquitted.

1933 Heinrich Himmler becomes Police Commander of Germany.

1934 Clyde Barrow kills two young highway patrolmen, H. D. Murphy and Edward Bryant Wheeler, at the intersection of Route 114 near Grapevine, Texas. Bonnie Parker's role in the murders helps turn public perception against the gang for good.

1941 The Blockade Runner Badge for German Kriegsmarine is instituted.

1941 US Navy takes over Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay.

1945 World War II: The Ruhr Pocket of German forces are encircled by the US Ninth Army and US First Army, eventually leading to the capture of 317,000 German troops.

1969 The Hawker Siddeley Harrier (vertical take-off fighter) enters service with the RAF.

1970 John Lennon and Yoko Ono release hoax they are having dual sex change operations.

1976 Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs found Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs' parents house in Cupertino, California.

1992 Battleship USS Missouri, on which the Japanese surrender took place, decommissioned.

1621 Mayflower sails from Plymouth, Massachusetts on a return trip to England.

1900 Attempted assassination of Edward Prince of Wales in Brussels, fails.

1939 Membership of Hitler Youth becomes obligatory.

1943 Chinese steward Poon Lim is found off the coast of Brazil by a Brazilian fishing family after being adrift for 133 days following the torpedoing of the British ship SS Benlomond by a German U-boat.

1943 Mortsel, Belgium: Allies target Minerva car factory, used for repairing Luftwaffe planes for bombing raid; collateral damage from missed targets kills 936 civilians, Belgium's greatest loss of WWII

1951 Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, atomic spies, sentenced to death.

1982 British Royal Navy aircraft carriers Invincible and Hermes, with escort vessels, depart Portsmouth, England for the Falkland Islands in response to the Argentine invasion.

1853 Queen Victoria asks John Snow to administer chloroform during the delivery of her eighth child, Leopold, leads to wider acceptance of obstetrical anesthesia.

1926 Mussolini is shot at 3 times by Violet Gibson in Rome, she only hits him once in the nose.

1943 German Lt colonel Claus von Stauffenberg seriously wounded in allied air raid.

1945 Battle of Okinawa: US planes intercept Japanese fleet heading for Okinawa on a suicide mission, super battleship Yamato and four destroyers are sunk.

1945 Kuniaki Koiso resigns as Prime Minister of Japan after the US invasion of Okinawa; he is replaced by Kantaro Suzuki.

1945 Sonderkommando Elbe, special Luftwaffe units designed to destroy Allied planes by ramming them mid-air, are sent on their first and only mission of World War II

1966 US recovers a lost hydrogen bomb from the Mediterranean sea floor (whoops)

1968 Riots continue in over 100 US cities following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

1971 US President Richard Nixon orders lt Calley (Mi Lai) free.

1972 Three members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) die in a premature bomb explosion in Belfast.

1886 William Gladstone introduces the first Irish Home Rule Bill in the British House of Commons.

1913 China's National Assembly opens in Peking, the first free democratic parliament in Chinese history.

1940 German battle cruisers sink British aircraft carrier Glorious.

1961 British liner "Dara" explodes in Persian Gulf, kills 236

1983 In front of a live audience of 20 tourists, David Copperfield makes the Statue of Liberty disappear.

1483 Edward V, aged 12, succeeds his father Edward IV as King of England. He is never crowned and disappears, presumed murdered, after being incarcerated in the Tower of London with his younger brother Richard (the "Princes in the Tower")

1768 John Hancock refuses to allow two British customs agents to go below deck of his ship, considered by some to be the first act of physical resistance to British authority in the colonies.

1916 The Libau sets sail from Germany with a cargo of 20,000 rifles to assist Irish republicans; Captain Karl Spindler changes the name of the vessel to the Aud to avoid British detection.

1940 German cruiser Blucher torpedoed and capsizes in Oslofjord, 1,000 die.

1940 Nazi Germany invades Denmark and Norway, and Denmark surrenders after a six-hour battle.

1945 Battleship Admiral Scheer sunk by RAF bombing in Kiel.

1963 Winston Churchill becomes 1st honorary US citizen.

1981 US Navy nuclear submarine USS George Washington rams Japanese freighter Nisso Maru, sinking the civilian ship in the South China Sea.

2002 Funeral of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother at Westminster Abbey UK. More than a million people line the streets.

1861 Fort Sumter in South Carolina is attacked by the Confederacy, beginning the American Civil War.

1941 Vichy-France's head of government Admiral François Darlan consults with Adolf Hitler.

1945 Canadian troops liberate Nazi concentration camp Westerbork, Netherlands.

1945 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office and Vice President Harry Truman is sworn in as 33rd US President.

1945 British Royal Navy captures German U-boat U-1024 in the Irish Sea; it sinks while being towed the next day.

1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into space and orbit Earth, aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft.

1975 Six Catholic civilians are killed in a Ulster Volunteer Force gun and grenade attack on Strand Bar in Belfast, North Ireland.

1692 Edward Bishop is jailed for proposing flogging as a cure for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.

1712 Last sighting of the Dutch ship Zuytdorp as it leaves the Cape of Good Hope carrying a cargo of silver with 200 crew and passengers; the wreck is discovered in 1927 north of Perth, Western Australia.

1721 HMS Seahorse infected with smallpox arrives in Boston harbor, causing the first outbreak in two decades. - half of the population catch it, causing 850 deaths.

1915 First military use of poison gas occurs when Germany uses chlorine gas against the Allies at Ypres during World War I

1916 Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers Eóin MacNeill issues the Countermanding order in Dublin to try to stop what would become the Easter Rising.

1940 Rear Admiral Joseph Taussig testifies before US Senate Naval Affairs Committee that war with Japan is inevitable.

1945 Battle of Berlin: Upon being informed that a planned counter-attack never happened, Adolf Hitler flies into a rage, denounces the German Army and concedes World War II is lost.

1945 SS chief Heinrich Himmler secretly meets with Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, asking him to act as an intermediary for a surrender offer to the Western Allies. The Allies do not take the offer seriously.

1952 First atomic explosion shown on network news from the Nevada Test Site.

1972 An 11-year-old boy killed by a rubber bullet fired by the British Army in Belfast; he was the first to die from a rubber bullet impact.

2016 Paris Agreement on climate change is signed in New York, binding 195 nations to limit the increase in the global average temperature to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C

1597 William Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is first performed with Queen Elizabeth I of England in attendance.

1861 Robert E. Lee is named commander of Virginia's Confederate forces (US Civil War)

1867 Queen Victoria and Napoleon III turn down plans for a channel tunnel.

1918 Raid of Zeebrugge; the British navy attempts to block German vessels from leaving port by sinking obsolete ships - mostly fails.