1471 Battle of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire: Final battle between the Houses of Lancaster and York sees Prince of Wales, Edward of Westminster, killed and King Edward IV return to his throne, restoring political stability to England until his death in 1483

1910 Wilfrid Laurier passes the Naval Service Act, which creates the Royal Canadian Navy.

1916 At request of US, Germany curtails its submarine warfare.

1916 Ned Daly, Willie Pearse, Michael O'Hanrahan and Joseph Plunkett are executed by British authorities following the Easter Rising, at Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin.

1917 A flotilla of US destroyer ships arrive in Queenstown, Ireland, to aid in convoying ships to England.

1945 German forces in Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands surrender unconditionally to British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at Luneburg Heath.

1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman to be elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1875 German SS Schiller sinks near Scilly Islands, 312 killed.

1915 RMS Lusitania is sunk by a German submarine off the southern coast of Ireland, with 1,198 lives lost.

1942 Nazi decree orders all Jewish pregnant women of Kovno Ghetto executed.

1945 Unconditional surrender of the German Third Reich to the Allies is signed by General Alfred Jodl at Reims in northern France.

1954 French surrender to Vietminh after 55-day siege at Dien Bien Phu.

1954 US, Great Britain & France reject Russian membership of NATO

1960 USSR announces Francis Gary Powers confesses to being a CIA spy.

1801 First Barbary War: The Barbary pirates of Tripoli declare war on the United States of America (first US foreign war)

1915 Canadian physician Cluny Macpherson first presents his gas mask invention to the British War Office.

1918 HMS Vindictive sunk to block entrance of Ostend Harbour.

1940 Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister at the head of a coalition government.

1941 Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess escapes to Britain to open secret negotiations with the Allies, parachuting into Scotland.

1960 US atomic submarine USS Triton completes first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.

1995 Britain lifts a 23-year ban on ministerial talks with Sinn Féin.

1797 Nore Mutiny: British Royal Navy sailors mutiny on the Thames, England and blockade London.

1937 Coronation of King George VI of Great Britain (and his other realms and territories beyond the sea) at Westminster Abbey, London.

1940 Nazi blitzkrieg and conquest of France begins with German forces crossing the Muese River.

1941 Martin Bormann succeeds Rudolf Hess as Adolf Hitler's deputy.

1949 USSR lifts blockade of West Berlin after US, UK, and allies successfully supply the city during the Berlin Airlift.

1982 In Fatima Portugal, a Spanish Traditionalist priest who opposed Vatican II reforms and saw Pope John Paul II as a perpetrator of them, is stopped prior to his attempt to attack the Pope with a bayonet.

2002 Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro, becoming the first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since Castro's 1959 revolution.

1804 Napoléon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of France by the French Senate.

1917 First units of the American Expeditionary Force, commanded by General John J. Pershing, is ordered to France.

1933 Around 5,000 forced deportees in the Soviet Union arrive on Nazino Island; within thirteen weeks most of them will be dead due to disease, cannibalism and violence.

1944 Polish 2nd Army corps captures convent of Monte Cassino, Italy.

1974 India becomes the sixth nation to detonate an atomic bomb.

1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state triggers the largest landslide in history, killing 57 people and causing over $1 billion in damage.

1980 People's Republic of China launches 1st intercontinental rocket.

1931 Cruiser Deutschland launched in Kiel.

1941 New battleship Bismarck leaves Gdynia, Poland.

1943 Berlin is declared "Judenrien" (free of Jews)

1943 Churchill pledges Britain's full support to US against Japan.

1959 The USS Triton, the first submarine with two nuclear reactors, is completed.

1962 Marilyn Monroe sings "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to JFK before 15,000 attendees, accompanied by jazz pianist Hank Jones, at Madison Square Garden, NYC

1964 US diplomats find at least 40 secret microphones in Moscow embassy.

1967 USSR ratifies treaty with Britain & US banning nuclear weapons in space.

1971 USSR launches Mars 2, becomes the 1st spacecraft to crash land on Mars.

1799 Napoleon makes statement in support of re-establishing Jerusalem for Jews.

1840 The transporting of British convicts to the New South Wales colony is abolished.

1849 Abraham Lincoln receives a patent (only US President to do so) for a device to lift a boat over shoals and obstructions.

1906 A British garrison leaves Esquimalt, on the Pacific coast, after a military occupation that began in 1858: the last British soldiers stationed in Canada.

1915 Local train collides with troop train killing 226 in Gretna, Scotland.

1931 1931 George End introduces “Genuine Diamondback Rattlesnake with Supreme Sauce” in a can, by his Florida Products Corporation; the popular item ceases production in 1944 after when the owner dies, a victim of one snake's revenge.

1933 First modern sighting of the Loch Ness Monster by Aldie and John Mackay, who claim to see "something resembling a whale"

1939 Germany's Adolf Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini sign the "Pact of Steel" formalizing the 1936 alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.

1947 1st US ballistic missile fired.

1971 A British soldier is killed by members of the Official Irish Republican Army in Belfast.

1972 Over 400 women in Derry attack the offices of Official Sinn Féin in Derry, North Ireland, following the shooting of William Best by the Official Irish Republican Army.

1973 President Nixon confesses his role in Watergate cover-up.

1998 Lewinsky scandal: a federal judge rules that United States Secret Service agents can be compelled to testify before a grand jury concerning the scandal, involving President Bill Clinton.

1897 "Dracula" by Irish author Bram Stoker is published by Archibald Constable and Company in London.

1908 At Masjed Soleyman (مسجد سليمان) in southwest Persia, the first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East is made, rights acquired by the United Kingdom.

1922 Vladimir Lenin suffers a stroke.

1945 US drop fire bombs on Tokyo.

1956 A fire on board the aircraft carrier USS Bennington in Narragansett Bay, off Rhode Island, kills 103 crew.

1959 Wreck of WWII bomber 'Lady Be Good' in the Libyan Desert is reached by a recovery team from US Air Force's Wheelus Air Base in Tripoli; plane had crashed returning from initial mission on 1943

1966 Buddhist sets himself on fire at US consulate in Hué, South Vietnam.

1972 The Irish Republican Army (IRA) plant a bomb in Oxford Street, Belfast, killing a 64-year-old woman.

1982 British ship Atlantic Conveyor carrying Chinook helicopters and destroyer HMS Coventry hit in Falkland war: 39 crew members die.

2004 US Army veteran Terry Nichols is found guilty of 161 state murder charges for helping carry out the Oklahoma City bombing.

1679 Habeas Corpus Act passes in England, strengthening a person's right to challenge unlawful arrest and imprisonment.

1905 Japanese fleet destroys the Russian East Sea fleet in the Battle of Tsushima, the only decisive clash between modern steel battleships in history.

1936 RMS Queen Mary leaves Southampton for NY on maiden voyage.

1940 British and Allied forces begin the evacuation of Dunkirk (Operation Dynamo) during World War II

1940 World War II: In the Le Paradis massacre, 97 soldiers from a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are shot after surrendering to German troops.

1941 FDR declares state of emergency after a German U-boat sinks the American flagged SS Robin Moor.

1941 German battleship Bismarck sunk by British naval force.

1942 Attempted assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich by a grenade thrown by Czech rebels in Prague during Operation Anthropoid; he dies a week later from an infection. Adolf Hitler orders 10,000 Czechs murdered in revenge, leads in June to the annihilation of Lidice.

1431 Joan of Arc is accused of relapsing into heresy by donning male clothing again, providing justification for her execution.

1588 King Philip II dispatches the Spanish Armada under the Duke of Medina-Sidonia from Lisbon, Portugal to invade England.

1936 Alan Turing submits "On Computable Numbers" for publication, in which he sets out the theoretical basis for modern computers.

1937 Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1946 US Patent filed for a hydrogen bomb.

1948 Israeli Air Force is officially founded shortly after the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

1972 Four Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers and four civilians killed when a bomb they were preparing exploded prematurely at a house in Belfast.

1972 White House "plumbers" first break in at the Democratic National Headquarters and install listening devices at Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C.

1916 Battle of Jutland: Largest naval battle of World War I between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet, 8,645 sailors are killed in an inconclusive battle but strategic British victory. German fleet never puts to sea again in WWI.

1878 German battleship SMS Grosser Kurfürst sinks, 284 killed.

1900 US troops arrive in Beijing, help put down Boxer Rebellion.

1911 RMS Titanic launched in Belfast.

1916 HMS Invincible explodes after taking fire during the Battle of Jutland, killing 1026 officers including Rear-Admiral Hood - only 6 crew members survive.

1940 British Major General Bernard Montgomery leaves Dunkirk.

1940 Winston Churchill flies to Paris to meet with French Marshal Philippe Pétain who announces he is willing to make a separate peace with Germany.

1942 U-boats sink and damage 146 allied ships this month (722,666 tons)

1943 42 U-boats sunk by the Allies this month.

1774 Boston Port Act: Following the passage of the act, the British government orders Port of Boston closed to punish colonists for the Boston Tea Party.

1879 Napoleon Eugene, the last dynastic Bonaparte, is killed serving with British forces in the Anglo-Zulu War. He is buried in Farnborough, Hampshire.

1918 Canadian ace Billy Bishop downs 6 aircraft over a three-day span, including German ace Paul Bilik, reclaiming his top scoring title from James McCudden.

1935 Compulsory driving tests and license plates introduced in the United Kingdom.

1936 Queen Mary completes its maiden voyage, arriving in NY

1939 British submarine "Thetis" sinks in Liverpool Bay with all 99 aboard.

1939 Retired German Colonel-general Gerd von Runstedt returns to service.

1944 Allied generals Bernard Montgomery, George S. Patton, Omar Bradley, Miles Dempsey and Harry Crerar meet in Portsmouth, England just prior to D-Day.

1962 SS officer Adolf Eichmann is executed in Israel after being found guilty of war crimes.

1984 Netherlands' Lubbers government gives 48 sites for cruise missiles.

1896 Italian engineer and inventor Guglielmo Marconi applies for the first ever patent for a system of wireless telegraphy in the United Kingdom.

1902 British naval officer David Beatty is appointed captain of the cruiser HMS Juno.

1917 Canadian ace Billy Bishop undertakes a solo mission behind enemy lines, shooting down three aircraft as they were about to take off and several more on the ground, for which he is awarded the Victoria Cross.

1940 Heavy German bombing on Dunkirk beach.

1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey, London, England.

1969 Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne slices US destroyer USS Frank E Evans in half, killing 74 (South Vietnam)

1972 Two British soldiers die in an IRA land mine attack near Rosslea, County Fermanagh.

1989 10,000 Chinese soldiers are blocked by 100,000 citizens in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, protecting students demonstrating for democracy.