This Day In History
69 - Roman Lower Rhine army proclaims its commander, Vitellius, Emperor 533 - John II begins his reign as Catholic Pope 1235 - Emperor Joseph II orders Jews of Galicia Austria to adopt family names Spain 1492 - Muhammad XII, the last Emir of Granada, surrenders his city to Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabel I of Castile, ending both the Reconquista and centuries of Muslim rule in the Iberian peninsula 1570 Tsar Ivan the Terrible's march to Novgorod begins 1585 - Spain & Catholic France sign Saint League of Joinville 1602 - Spanish force in Ireland surrender to the English army at Kinsdale 1757 - British troops occupy Calcutta India 1776 - Austria ends interregation torture 1818- The British Institution of Civil Engineers is founded. 1839- First photo of the Moon, taken by French photographer Louis Daguerre 1863- Battle of Murfreesboro (Stone's River) ends 1879- Australian fast bowler Fred Spofforth dismisses 3 English batsmen with consecutive deliveries during the 3rd Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for Test cricket's first "hat-trick" 1879- British battleship Thunder explodes in Gulf of Ismid, 9 die 1882- Because of anti-monopoly laws, Standard Oil is organized as a trust 1883 - Battle of Boschberg takes place in South Africa as part of the Mapoch War 1905 - Elara, a satellite of Jupiter, discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine in San Jose, California 1905 - Japanese troops capture Port Arthur from Russia, a blow to national morale and causing further discontent within Russia 1905 - American anarcho-syndicalist union known as the Industrial Workers of the World forms Invention 1913 - Mahatma Gandhi leaves the Tolstoy Farm in Transvaal, South Africa 1919 - Lithuania gains independence 1941 - World War II: German bombing severely damages the Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff, Wales 1942 - World War II: the 28 nations at war with Axis powers pledge to make no separate peace deals 1960 - John Reynolds sets age of solar system at 4,950,000,000 years 1979 - Gavaskar gets twin tons for India for the third time (v WI) 1984 - Riot in Tunis kills over 100 1984 - Major-General Muhammadu Buhari is declared Head of State in Nigeria, following a military coup 1985 - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reappoints Coptic pope Shenuda III 1992 - Test debut of Shane Warne, v India at Sydney 1994 - Battles between army & rebellious indians in South Mexico, kill 57 1995 - Most distant galaxy yet discovered found by scientists using Keck telescope in Hawaii (est 15 billion light years away) 1999 - A brutal snowstorm smashes into the Midwestern United States, causing 14 inches (359 mm) of snow in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and 19 inches (487 mm) in Chicago, where temperatures plunge to -13°F (-25°C); 68 deaths are reported. 2004 - Stardust successfully flies past Comet Wild 2, collecting samples that it will return to Earth two years later 2014 - 30 people are killed after a bus plunges off a cliff and falls 400 ft in Malshej Ghat, India 2014 - Raul Castro gives a speech commemorating the 55th anniversary of the Cuban revolution and warns of "neo-liberal and neo-colonial thinking" entering the country 2015 - The Economist lists Daniel Kahneman as the 7th most influential economist in the world 2016 - Saudi Arabia executes 47 persons, including Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr 2017 - US House Republicans vote to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, a public uproar forces them to back down the next day