218 BC Battle of the Trebia: In the first major battle of the Second Punic War, Hannibal's Carthaginian army, with a stronger cavalry, heavily defeats Roman forces, with a stronger infantry, of Sempronius Longus on Italian soil

1118 Alfonso I of Aragon occupies Zaragoza, (Spain), defeating and taking the city Taifa of Zaragoza from the Moors

1271 Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan", marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of China (1271 to 1368)

1603 The first fleet of the Dutch East India Company under Admiral Steven van der Haghen departs for the East-Indies

1642 Abel Tasman's expedition is the first European voyage to reach New Zealand sailing into Wharewharangi Bay at the top of the South Island, making the first confirmed contact with the Maori

1719 Thomas Fleet publishes "Mother Goose's Melodies For Children" in Boston, Massachusetts

1774 Austrian Empress Maria Theresa expels Jews from Prague, Bohemia and Moravia for their alleged collaboration with the enemy during the war with Prussia

1777 America’s first national Thanksgiving Day was declared by the Continental Congress to commemorate the victory of the American Army under General Horatio Gates over British General Burgoyne's army at Saratoga, NY

1787 New Jersey becomes the third state to ratify the US constitution

1796 The first US newspaper to appear on Sunday is the Baltimore Monitor

1799 America’s first President and General of the Army during the Revolutionary War, George Washington's body is interred at Mount Vernon

1839 John William Draper takes the first portrait photograph of a female face made in US

1849 American astronomer and the first director of Harvard College Observatory William Bond takes the first photograph of Moon through a telescope

1865 The first US cattle importation prohibition law is passed to prevent the spread of foreign diseases among cattle in the US

1867 The Angola Horror train wreck occurred just after 3 p.m. when the last coach of the Buffalo-bound New York Express of the Lake Shore Railway derailed at a bridge in Angola, New York.  It slid down into a gorge, and caught fire, killing some 49 people.  At the time, it was one of the deadliest train wrecks in American history

1878 Coal miner John ‘Black Jack’ Kehoe, the last of the Irish Molly Maguires, is hanged in Pottsville, PA

1888 Rancher and amateur archaeologist Richard Wetherill and his brother in-law discover the ancient Anasazi Cliff Palace ruins of Mesa Verde, Colorado

1898 The first automobile speed record set is 39 mph by French Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat of Paris

1916 Battle of Verdun, the longest of World War I, officially ends in German defeat after nine months of fighting and almost 1 million total casualties

1917 The 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, authorizing prohibition of alcohol, is approved by the US congress and sent to the states for ratification

1917 The Soviet government under Vladimir Lenin issues a decree recognizing Finland's newly-declared independence

1920 The first US postage stamps are printed without the words United States or US.  Called the Pilgrim Tercentenary Issue, so well known was the story of the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth that the stamps did not include the country of origin

1936 Su-Lin, the first giant panda to come to the US from China, arrives in San Francisco

1944 Typhoon Cobra, also known as the Typhoon of 1944 or Halsey's Typhoon, was the United States Navy designation for a powerful tropical cyclone that struck the United States Pacific Fleet in December 1944, during World War II. The storm sank three destroyers, killed 790 sailors, damaged 9 other warships, and swept dozens of aircraft overboard off their aircraft carriers

1946 US TV's first prime time soap opera by the DuMont network, "Faraway Hill" ends after a 2-month run in NYC and Washington DC

1956 The Israeli flag is hoisted on Mount Sinai

1957 World's first full scale nuclear power plant, for peacetime use only, begins to generate electricity at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station on the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania

1958 Project SCORE, the world’s first purpose-built communications satellite, is launched from Cape Canaveral by NASA

1965 Astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell splash down in the Atlantic after the two week Gemini 7 mission

1969 The House of Lords votes to abolish the death penalty in England, Wales and Scotland (Northern Ireland 25 July 1973)

1972 The US launches Operation Linebacker II, its heaviest bombing of North Vietnam, as negotiations to end the Vietnam War collapse

1979 Stuntman Stanley Barrett unofficially breaks the land speed record and the sound barrier in his three-wheeled vehicle the Budweiser Rocket (739.666 mph or Mach 1.01). The speed was never officially recorded and the attempt remains controversial

1985 The UN Security Council unanimously condemns "acts of hostage-taking"

1989 The "I Love Lucy" Christmas episode is shown for the first time in over 30 years

1990 President Bush reiterates his "no concessions" stance against Iraq

1993 The MGM Grand Las Vegas hotel and casino first opens as the largest hotel complex in the world (since surpassed)

1996 The US TV industry execs agree to adopt a ratings system

2002 Fashion designer Calvin Klein announces he is selling his company to shirt-maker Phillips-Van Heusen for $430 million

2011 The last US troops withdraw from Iraq, formally ending the Iraq War

2012 Canadian police begin arresting 17 people for 'the Great Maple Syrup Heist', for stealing 3,000 tons from a storage facility in Quebec

2018 A meteor explodes in a huge fireball over the Bering Sea with 10 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, it’s the 2nd largest in the last 30 yrs

2023 A 6.2 magnitude earthquake strikes Jishishan county in Gansu Province, China, killing at least 127 people.  It is China's worst earthquake in 13 years

2023 An Icelandic volcano, Eldvorp-Svartsengi, erupts on the Reykjanes peninsula, about 2 miles north of the town of Grindavík

2023 BP joins other companies in pausing transit of ships through the Red Sea, amid attacks by the Yemen's Houthi rebels on commercial vessels, with serious implications for global shipping