295 8th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet

1290 Round Table tournament held near Winchester, England, in imitation of King Arthur, to commemorate betrothal of daughter of Edward I, and attended by the king

1505 Jews are expelled from Orange Burgandy by Philibert of Luxembourg

1534 French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail with two ships from Saint-Malo for Newfoundland, tasked by Francis I to look for gold and riches

1611 First known performance of Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth at the Globe Theatre, London, recorded by Simon Forman

1653 Oliver Cromwell and 40 musketeers forcibly dissolve the English Rump Parliament, after it failed to establish a caretaker government. In Cromwell's words "You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... In the name of God, go!"

1736 French mathematician Pierre Louis Maupertuis begins Lapland expedition to measure latitude and shape of the earth, joined by fellow scientists Anders Celsius, Charles Etienne Louis Camus, Alexis Clairaut, and Pierre-Charles Le Monnier

1777 New York adopts new constitution as an independent state

1836 Territory of Wisconsin created

1862 First pasteurization test is completed by Frenchmen Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard

1871 US 3rd Enforcement Act (President can suspend writ of habeas corpus)

1879 1st mobile home (horse drawn) used in a journey from London & Cyprus

1894 136,000 mine workers strike in Ohio for pay increase

1902 Marie and Pierre Curie isolate the radioactive compound radium chloride

1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition opens in St Louis

1910 Halley's Comet passes 29th recorded perihelion at 87.9 million km

1914 Ludlow Massacre: Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) security team and Colorado National Guard soldiers kill 21 workers, women and children during mine strike in Ludlow, Colorado

1914 US President W Wilson, having dispatched more naval ships to Mexico, asks a joint session of Congress to approve armed force if necessary; Congress approves

1918 Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims marking his final victories before his death the following day

1920 Tornadoes kill 219 in Alabama & Mississippi

1926 1st check sent by radio facsimile transmission across Atlantic

1940 1st electron microscope demonstrated (RCA), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

1948 NYC hikes subway fare from 5 cents to 10 cents

1951 Huge ticker-tape parade held in NYC for World War II and Korean War General Douglas MacArthur after he was relieved of Command by President Truman

1961 American Harold Graham makes 1st rocket belt flight

1964 86% of black students boycott Cleveland schools

1967 US Surveyor 3 lands on Moon

1971 US Supreme Court upholds use of busing to achieve racial desegregation

1972 NASA Apollo 16's John Young & Charles Duke land on the moon with Boeing Lunar Rover #2

1979 US President Jimmy Carter is attacked by a swamp rabbit which swam up to his fishing boat in Plains, Georgia

1985 ATF raid on The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord compound in northern Arkansas

1994 Space shuttle STS-59 (Endeavour 6), lands

1998 German terrorist group Red Army Faction announces their dissolution after 28 years.

1999 Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School, Colorado

2010 The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explodes, killing 11 and causing the rig to sink, causing a massive oil discharge into the Gulf of Mexico and an environmental disaster

2020 Price of US oil turns negative for the 1st time in history - West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for US oil, falls as low as minus $37.63 a barrel as worldwide demand falls

2023 SpaceX’s Starship rocket - the most powerful ever made with 33 booster engines, launches in historic first test flight from Boca Chica, Texas. Explodes four minutes into flight with blame centering on Elon Musk's rush to launch on 420.

2023 Total solar eclipse in Exeter, Western Australia blocks out the sun for 58 seconds