1. In 1280, the Japanese imperial court ordered all temples and shrines to pray for victory in the impending second Mongol invasion.

2. In 1472, Orkney and Shetland were left by Norway to Scotland due to a dowry payment.

3. In 1525, Swiss and German mercenaries deserted the army of French King Francis I.

4. In 1547, King Edward VI of England was crowned following the death of his father Henry VIII.

5. In 1613, Gerard Reynst was appointed governor-general of the Dutch East Indies.

6. In 1619, the trial against Johan van Oldenbarnevelt began in The Hague for alleged crimes against the federal government.

7. In 1653, the Dutch fleet under Adm van Tromp was defeated by Admiral Blake off Portsmouth.

8. In 1673, the 1st recorded wine auction was held in London.

9. In 1710, Prince John William Friso became stadtholder of Groningen, Netherlands.

10. In 1724, George Frideric Handel's opera "Giulio Cesare in Egitto" premiered at the King's Theatre in Haymarket, London.

11. In 1725, 10 sleeping Indians were scalped by whites in New Hampshire for £100 a scalp bounty.

12. In 1732, the Estates of Holland ratified the Treaty of Vienna.

13. In 1737, the French minister of finance, Chauvelin, resigned.

14. In 1745, Jacobite troops occupied Fort Augustus, Scotland.

15. In 1768, the 1st American chartered fire insurance company opened in Pennsylvania.

16. In 1792, the US Postal Service was created, with postage 6 - 12 cents depending on distance.

17. In 1798, French General Louis Alexandre Berthier forcibly removed Pope Pius VI from Rome during the French occupation of Rome.

18. In 1809, the US Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had more power than any state.

19. In 1810, Andreas Hofer, Tyrolean patriot and leader of the rebellion against Napoleon's forces, was executed.

20. In 1811, Austria declared bankruptcy.

21. In 1816, Gioachino Rossini's comic opera "The Barber of Seville" premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome, Italy.

22. In 1823, English Captain James Weddell reached 74°15'S, 1520 km from the South Pole.

23. In 1831, Polish revolutionaries defeated the Russians in the Battle of Grochow.

24. In 1835, Concepción, Chile, was destroyed by an earthquake, killing 5,000 people.

25. In 1839, Congress prohibited dueling in the District of Columbia.

26. In 1846, the British occupied the Sikh citadel of Lahore.

27. In 1856, the steam packet-ship John Rutledge, en route from Liverpool to New York, hit an iceberg and sank with the loss of 120 passengers and 19 crew; only one survivor.

28. In 1861, the Navy of the Confederate States (CSN) was formed during the US Civil War.

29. In 1864, the Civil War Battle of Olustee took place in Florida.

30. In 1865, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology formed the 1st US collegiate architectural school.

31. In 1869, Tennessee Governor W. C. Brownlow declared martial law in the Ku Klux Klan crisis.

32. In 1872, the hydraulic electric elevator was patented by Cyrus Baldwin.

33. In 1872, Luther Crowell patented a machine that manufactures paper bags.

34. In 1872, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art opened.

35. In 1872, Silas Noble & J. P. Cooley patented a toothpick manufacturing machine.

36. In 1873, British naval officer John Moresby discovered the site of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea and claimed it for the United Kingdom.

37. In 1873, the University of California got its first medical school (UC/San Francisco).

38. In 1877, the 1st cantilever bridge in the US was completed in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.

39. In 1881, Conductor Hans Richter led the Vienna Philharmonic in the premiere of Anton Bruckner's "Symphony No. 4" in Vienna, Austria-Hungary.

40. In 1887, Germany, Austria-Hungary and France ended the Triple Alliance.

41. In 1890, the Amsterdam theater was destroyed by fire.

42. In 1892, Oscar Wilde's comedy "Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman" premiered at St James Theatre, London.

43. In 1895, Congress authorized a US mint at Denver, Colorado.

44. In 1899, Ill Tel & Tel was granted a franchise for the Chicago freight tunnel system.

45. In 1901, the 1st territorial legislature of Hawaii convened.

46. In 1902, heavy surf broke over Seal Rocks and damaged Sutro Baths in San Francisco.

47. In 1909, the Futurist Manifesto was published in the French journal "Le Figaro".

48. In 1913, King O'Malley drove in the first survey peg to mark the commencement of work on the construction of Australian capital Canberra.

49. In 1915, the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (World's Fair) opened in San Francisco.

50. In 1919, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was injured during an assassination attempt.