1. 1302 - The weaver Peter de Coninck led a massacre of the Flemish oligarchs.

2. 1604 - Bertrand Russell, a famous British logician and philosopher, was born.

3. 1642 - Montreal, Canada, was founded.

4. 1643 - Queen Anne, the widow of Louis XIII, was granted sole and absolute power as regent by the Paris parliament, overriding the late king's will.

5. 1652 - In Rhode Island, a law was passed that made slavery illegal in North America. It was the first law of its kind.

6. 1756 - The Seven Years' War began when Great Britain declared war on France.

7. 1792 - Russian troops invaded Poland.

8. 1798 - The first secretary of the US Navy was appointed. He was Benjamin Stoddert.

9. 1802 - Great Britain declared war on Napoleon's France.

10. 1804 - Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed emperor by the French Senate.

11. 1828 - The Battle of Las Piedras ended the conflict between Uruguay and Brazil.

12. 1828 - Mao Zedong put forward the sixteen - character formula for guerrilla warfare: "The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue".

13. 1896 - The first modern Olympic Games opened in Athens, Greece.

14. 1896 - The US Supreme Court upheld the "separate but equal" policy in the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision.

15. 1897 - A public reading of Bram Stoker's new novel, Dracula, or, the Un - dead, was performed in London.

16. 1904 - Brigand Raizuli kidnapped American Ion H. Perdicaris in Morocco.

17. 1910 - The earth passed through the tail of Comet Halley.

18. 1917 - The US Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which called up soldiers to fight in World War I.

19. 1926 - Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson vanished while visiting a beach in Venice, CA. She reappeared a month later with the claim that she had been kidnapped.

20. 1927 - Charles Lindbergh began his first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

21. 1931 - Japanese pilot Seiji Yoshihara crashed his plane in the Pacific Ocean while trying to be the first to cross the ocean nonstop.

22. 1933 - The Tennessee Valley Authority was created.

23. 1934 - The US Congress approved an act, known as the "Lindberg Act", that called for the death penalty in interstate kidnapping cases.

24. 1936 - The Central Revolutionary Military Commission issued an order for the Western Expedition Campaign.

25. 1941 - Werner Sombart, a German sociologist and economist, died.

26. 1942 - New York ended night baseball games for the duration of World War II.

27. 1944 - Monte Cassino, Europe's oldest monastic house, was finally captured by the Allies in Italy.

28. 1949 - The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America was incorporated.

29. 1951 - The United Nations moved its headquarters to New York City.

30. 1953 - The US conducted a hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

31. 1953 - Jacqueline Cochran, the first woman to fly faster than the speed of sound, piloted an F - 86 Sabre jet over California at an average speed of 652.337 miles - per - hour.

32. 1974 - India became the sixth nation to explode an atomic bomb.

33. 1980 - Mount St. Helens erupted in Washington state.

34. 1980 - The Gwangju Uprising broke out in South Korea.

35. 1981 - China's first carrier rocket was launched successfully.

36. 1983 - The US Senate revised immigration laws and gave millions of illegal aliens legal status under an amnesty program.

37. 1991 - Rajiv Gandhi, the former prime minister of India, was assassinated.

38. 1994 - Israel's three - decades - long occupation in the Gaza Strip ended as Israeli troops completed their withdrawal and Palestinian authorities took over.

39. 1996 - China announced that it had conducted a nuclear test.

40. 1998 - The US federal government and 20 states filed a sweeping antitrust case against Microsoft Corp.

41. 1998 - US federal officials arrested more than 130 people and seized $35 million in an investigation of money - laundering by a dozen Mexican banks and two drug - smuggling cartels.

42. 1998 - The Beijing - Kowloon through - train was put into operation.

43. 1999 - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) launched airstrikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

44. 2003 - The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the SARS epidemic had been brought under control.

45. 2008 - A major earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale hit Wenchuan, Sichuan, China, causing heavy casualties and property losses.

46. 2012 - Facebook Inc. held its initial public offering and began trading on the Nasdaq.

47. 2014 - Russian President Putin signed a bill to absorb Crimea into the Russian Federation.

48. 2016 - The 31st Summer Olympic Games were held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

49. 2017 - The United States launched a missile strike on a Syrian airbase in response to a chemical weapons attack.

50. 2018 - South Korean President Moon Jae - in and North Korean leader Kim Jong - un held a meeting.