• 1576 - Henry of Navarre converts to Roman Catholicism in order to ensure his right to the throne of France.
• 1597 - A group of early Japanese Christians are killed by the new government of Japan for being seen as a threat to Japanese society.
• 1631 - Roger Williams emigrates to Boston.
• 1778 - South Carolina becomes the first state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.
• 1782 - Spanish defeat British forces and capture Minorca.
• 1818 - Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte ascends to the thrones of Sweden and Norway.
• 1859 - Wallachia and Moldavia are united under Alexander John Cuza as the United Principalities.
• 1885 - King Léopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo as a personal possession.
• 1900 - The United States and the United Kingdom sign treaty for Panama Canal
• 1917 - The current constitution of Mexico is adopted, establishing a federal republic with powers separated into independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
• 1917 - The Congress of the United States passes a law, over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, banning most Asian immigration to the United States.
• 1918 - Stephen W. Thompson shot down a German airplane. It was the first aerial victory by the U.S. military.
• 1919 - Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith launch United Artists.
• 1924 - The Royal Greenwich Observatory begin broadcasting the hourly time signals known as the Greenwich Time Signal or the "BBC pips".
• 1945 - World War II: General Douglas MacArthur returns to Manila.
• 1946 - The Chondoist Chongu Party is founded in North Korea.
• 1958 - Gamel Abdel Nasser is nominated to be the first president of the United Arab Republic.
• 1958 - A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the US Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.
• 1962 - French President Charles De Gaulle calls for allowing Algeria to be an independent nation.
• 1968 - Vietnam War: Battle of Khe Sanh begins.
• 1971 - Apollo program: Apollo 14 Mission - Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell aboard LM, Antares land on the Moon at Fra Mauro formation.
• 1972 - Bob Douglas becomes the first African American elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
• 1974 - John Murtha becomes the first Vietnam War veteran elected to the Congress of the United States.
• 1988 - Manuel Noriega is indicted on drug smuggling and money laundering charges.
• 1988 - Comic Relief holds the first "Red Nose Day", which raises £15 million in the United Kingdom for charity.
• 1994 - Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
• 1994 - During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina more than 60 people are killed and some 200 wounded as a mortar shell slams into a downtown marketplace in Sarajevo.
• 1997 - The so-called Big Three banks in Switzerland announce the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families.
• 2004 - Twenty-three Chinese people drown when a group of 35 cockle-pickers are trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, England. Twenty-one bodies are recovered.
• 2004 - Rebels from the Revolutionary Artibonite Resistance Front capture the city of Gonaïves, starting the 2004 Haiti rebellion.
• 2008 - A major tornado outbreak across the Southern United States leaves at least 58 dead, the most since the May 31, 1985 outbreak that killed 88.

Births