1. 245 - Lu Xun, a statesman and military strategist in the Wu State during the Three Kingdoms period, died.

2. 1077 - Gundulf, a Norman monk, was consecrated as Bishop of Rochester. He later built Rochester Castle and the White Tower of the Tower of London as an engineer for William the Conqueror.

3. 1227 - Count Ugolino of Segna was elected Pope Gregory IX.

4. 1277 - The Byzantine - Venetian Treaty of 1277 was concluded, stipulating a two - year truce and renewing Venetian commercial privileges in the Byzantine Empire.

5. 1279 - The Mongols won the Battle of Yamen, ending the Song Dynasty in China.

6. 1284 - The Statute of Rhuddlan incorporated the Principality of Wales into England.

7. 1452 - Frederick III of Habsburg was the last Holy Roman Emperor crowned by medieval tradition in Rome by Pope Nicholas V.

8. 1524 - Giovanni de Varrazano, a Florentine explorer in the service of King Francis I of France, landed around the area of the Carolinas.

9. 1540 - The Court of Holland named Amsterdam sheriff John Hubrechtsz a "heretic".

10. 1563 - The Edict of Amboise was signed, ending the first phase of the French Wars of Religion and granting certain freedoms to the Huguenots.

11. 1571 - Spanish troops occupied Manila.

12. 1644 - Two hundred members of the Peking imperial family and court committed suicide in loyalty to the emperor.

13. 1649 - The House of Commons of England passed an act abolishing the House of Lords, declaring it "useless and dangerous to the people of England".
1682 - The Assembly of the French Clergy issued a declaration stating, among other things, that the power of the king is not subject to papal authority.

14. 1687 - Explorer René - Robert Cavalier, Sieur de la Salle, searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, was murdered by his own men.

15. 1748 - The Naturalization Act passed, granting Jews the right to colonize the North American colonies.

16. 1775 - Four people were buried by an avalanche for 37 days, and three survived in Italy. Poland and Prussia signed a trade agreement.

17. 1803 - Friedrich Schiller's "Die Braut von Messina" premiered in Weimar.

18. 1808 - Charles IV, King of Spain, abdicated after riots and a popular revolt at the Winter Palace in Aranjuez. His son, Ferdinand VII, took the throne.

19. 1812 - The first Spanish constitution was enacted, one of the earliest constitutions ever promulgated.

20. 1822 - Boston, Massachusetts was incorporated as a city.

21. 1831 - The first US bank robbery occurred. The City Bank in New York was robbed of $245,000.

22. 1858 - Kang Youwei, a leader of the Qing - Dynasty reformers, was born.

23. 1861 - The first Taranaki War ended in New Zealand.

24. 1863 - Confederate cruiser SS Georgiana was destroyed on her maiden voyage with a cargo of munitions and medicines then valued at over $1,000,000.

25. 1865 - The Battle of Bentonville took place. The Confederates retreated from Greenville, North Carolina.

26. 1866 - The immigrant ship Monarch of the Seas sank in Liverpool, and 738 people died.

27. 1875 - Zhang Zuolin, the leader of the Fengtian Clique of the Beiyang Warlords, was born.

28. 1877 - Australia beat England by 45 runs in the very first test match.

29. 1882 - The first stone was laid for the Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, designed by Antoni Gaudí.

30. 1885 - Louis Riel returned to Canada and proclaimed a provisional government in Saskatchewan.

31. 1895 - The Los Angeles Railway was established to provide streetcar service.

32. 1906 - Adolf Eichmann, a German military official, was born.

33. 1911 - The first International Women's Day was observed. Over 1 million men and women attended rallies in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland.

34. 1915 - Pluto was photographed for the first time, although it was unknown at the time.

35. 1917 - The US Supreme Court upheld an 8 - hour workday for railroad employees.

36. 1918 - Germany declared a democratic system after the end of World War I, marking the founding of the Weimar Republic. The US adopted the Standard Time Act of 1918.

37. 1919 - The literary magazine "Littérature", edited by André Breton, Philippe Soupault, and Louis Aragon, published its first issue.

38. 1920 - The US Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles for the second time, refusing to ratify the League of Nations' covenant.

39. 1921 - Italian fascists shot at a group of children in Strunjan, Slovenia, from the Parenzana train. Two children were killed, two were mangled, and three were wounded.

40. 1925 - Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, became a bishop, appointed as apostolic visitor to Bulgaria.

41. 1927 - Bloody battles took place between Communists and Nazis in Berlin.

42. 1930 - Arthur Balfour, a former British prime minister, died. The "Nanjing Incident" occurred in China.

43. 1931 - Nevada legalized gambling.

44. 1932 - The Sydney Harbour Bridge was opened in Sydney, Australia.

45. 1934 - The Ningxia War ended. Sun Dianying's army was in complete disarray.

46. 1937 - Astronomer Fritz Zwicky published his research on stellar explosions, coining the term "supernova". Pope Pius XI published the encyclical "Divini Redemptoris" against communism.

47. 1940 - The French government of Édouard Daladier fell. A British air raid on a German base at Sylt failed.

48. 1942 - US President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered men between 45 and 64 to register for non - military duty.

49. 1943 - The British 8th Army launched an assault on the Mareth Line in Tunisia. Frank Nitti, the boss of the Chicago Outfit after Al Capone, committed suicide.

50. 1944 - The Nazi - German regime began its terror rule in Hungary. Guo Moruo's "The 300th Anniversary of the Jiashen Incident" was published in the "Xinhua Daily" in Chongqing.