• 1248 - The Dutch city of Ommen receives city rights and fortification rights from Otto III, the Archbishop of Utrecht.
• 1537 - The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, and the second most senior, is formed.
• 1580 - Battle of Alcântara. Spain defeats Portugal.
• 1609 - Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
• 1718 - New Orleans, Louisiana is founded.
• 1758 - Seven Years' War: Frederick II of Prussia defeats the Russian army at the Battle of Zorndorf.
• 1768 - James Cook begins his first voyage.
• 1814 - Washington, D.C. is burned and White House is destroyed by British forces during the War of 1812.
• 1825 - Uruguay declares its independence from Brazil.
• 1830 - The Belgian Revolution begins.
• 1835 - The New York Sun perpetrates the Great Moon Hoax.
• 1894 - Shibasaburo Kitasato discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet.
• 1910 - Yellow Cab is founded.
• 1912 - The Kuomintang, the Chinese nationalist party, is founded.
• 1916 - The United States National Park Service is created.
• 1920 - Polish-Soviet War: Battle of Warsaw, started on August 13, now ends. The Red Army is defeated.
• 1921 - The first skirmishes of the Battle of Blair Mountain occur.
• 1933 - Diexi earthquake shook Mao County, Sichuan, China and killed 9,000 people.
• 1942 - World War II: Battle of Milne Bay, Papua New Guinea.
• 1942 - World War II: Second day of the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. A Japanese naval transport convoy headed towards Guadalcanal is turned-back by Allied air attack, losing one destroyer and one transport sunk, and one light cruiser heavily damaged.
• 1944 - World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies.
• 1945 - Ten days after World War II ended with Japan announcing its surrender, armed supporters of the Communist Party of China killed Baptist missionary John Birch, regarded by a portion of the American right as the first victim of the Cold War.
• 1948 - House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing: "Confrontation Day" between Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss.
• 1950 - President Harry Truman orders the US Army to seize control of the nation's railroads to avert a strike.
• 1981 - Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Saturn
• 1989 - Tadeusz Mazowiecki chosen as the first non-communist Prime Minister in Central and Eastern Europe.
• 1989 - Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Neptune, the outermost planet in the Solar System.
• 1989 - Mayumi Moriyama becomes Japan's first female cabinet secretary.
• 1991 - Belarus declares independence from the Soviet Union
• 1997 - Egon Krenz, the former East German leader, was convicted of a shoot-to-kill Berlin Wall policy.
• 2003 - The Tli Cho land claims agreement is signed between the Dogrib First Nations and the Canadian federal government in Rae-Edzo (now called Behchoko).

Births