Event-a-Day

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In 1954, The BBC broadcasts its first television news bulletin.

1962, Algeria becomes independent from France.

1971, Right to vote: The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years, is formally certified.

In 1189, Richard I 'the Lionhearted' accedes to the English throne after the death of his father.

1483, Richard III is crowned King of England.

1535, Sir Thomas More is executed for treason against King Henry VIII of England.

1557, King Philip II of Spain, consort of Queen Mary I of England, sets out from Dover to war with France, which eventually resulted in the loss of the City of Calais, the last English possession on the continent from the Hundred Years' War, and Mary I never seeing her husband again.

In 1865, Four conspirators in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln are hanged.

1898, U.S. President William McKinley signs the Newlines Resolution annexing Hawaii as a territory of the United States.

1907, Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. staged his first Follies on the roof of the New York Theater in New York City.

1911, The United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia sign the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention of 1911 banning open-water seal hunting, the first international treaty to address wildlife preservation issues.

1947, The Roswell incident, the (supposed) crash of an alien spaceship near Roswell in New Mexico.

1709, Peter I of Russia defeats Charles XII of Sweden at the Battle of Poltava, thus effectively ending Sweden's time as a major power in Europe.

1889, The first issue of The Wall Street Journal is published.

1948, The United States Air Force accepts its first female recruits into a program called Women in the Air Force (WAF).

1960, Francis Gary Powers is charged with espionage resulting from his flight over the Soviet Union.

2011, Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program.

1540, King Henry VIII of England annuls his marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves.

1807, The Treaties of Tilsit are signed by Napoleon I of France and Alexander I of Russia.

1810, Napoleon annexes the Kingdom of Holland as part of the First French Empire.

1816, Argentina declares independence from Spain.

1850, U.S. President Zachary Taylor dies after eating raw fruit and iced milk, to be succeeded by Millard Fillmore.

1868, The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing African Americans full citizenship and all persons in the United States due process of law.

1922, Johnny Weissmuller swims the 100 meters freestyle in 58.6 seconds breaking the world swimming record and the 'minute barrier'.

1943, The Allied invasion of Sicily soon causes the downfall of Mussolini and forces Hitler to break off the Battle of Kursk.

1944, American forces take Saipan, bringing the Japanese archipelago within range of B-29 raids, and causing the downfall of the Tojo government.

1986, The Parliament of New Zealand passes the Homosexual Law Reform Act legalizing homosexuality in New Zealand.

1877: The first Wimbledon tournament began on courts of All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club in Wimbledon in London.

1962: Andy Warhol's exhibition of Campbell's soup can portraits opened in LA.

1553, Lady Jane Grey takes the throne of England.

1778, American Revolution: Louis XVI of France declares war on the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1821. The United States takes possession of its newly bought territory of Florida from Spain.

1832, U.S. President Andrew Jackson vetoes a bill that would re-charter the Second Bank of the United States.

1850, U.S. President Millard Fillmore is sworn in, a day after becoming President upon Zachary Taylor's death.

1890, Wyoming is admitted as the 44th U.S. state.

1913, The temperature in Death Valley, California, hits 134 °F (57 °C), the highest temperature ever to be recorded on Earth.

1991, Boris Yeltsin takes office as the first elected President of Russia.

2016: ANDY MURRAY WINS HIS SECOND WIMBLEDON TITLE!

In 1750, Halifax, Nova Scotia was almost completely destroyed by fire.

1796, The United States takes possession of Detroit from Great Britain under terms of the Jay Treaty.

1798, The United States Marine Corps is re-established; they had been disbanded after the American Revolutionary War.

1804, A duel occurs in which the Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr mortally wounds former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.

1911, Babe Ruth makes his debut in Major League Baseball.

1921, Former President of the United States William Howard Taft is sworn in as 10th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the only person ever to hold both offices.

1960, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published, in the United States.

1962, First transatlantic satellite television transmission.

1962, Project Apollo: At a press conference, NASA announces lunar orbit rendezvous as the means to land astronauts on the Moon, and return them to Earth.

1972, The first game of the World Chess Championship 1972 between challenger Bobby Fischer and defending champion Boris Spassky starts.

1977, Martin Luther King, Jr. is posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In 1543, King Henry VIII of England marries his sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr, at Hampton Court Palace.

1776, Captain James Cook begins his third voyage.

1804, Former United States Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton dies a day after being shot in a duel.

1862, The Medal of Honor is authorized by the United States Congress.

1863, New York City draft riots: In New York City, opponents of conscription begin three days of rioting which will be later regarded as the worst in United States history.

1878, Treaty of Berlin: The European powers redraw the map of the Balkans. Serbia, Montenegro and Romania become completely independent of the Ottoman Empire.

1977, New York City: Amidst a period of financial and social turmoil experiences an electrical blackout lasting nearly 24 hours that leads to widespread fires and looting.

2013, George Zimmerman is found not guilty in the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

2016, Theresa May succeeds David Cameron as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; she is the second woman to do so, after Margaret Thatcher.

In 1789, Citizens of Paris storm the Bastille.

1853, Opening of the first major US world's fair, the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in New York City.

1865, First ascent of the Matterhorn by Edward Whimper and party, four of whom die on the descent.

1874, The Chicago Fire of 1874 burns down 47 acres of the city, destroying 812 buildings, killing 20, and resulting in the fire insurance industry demanding municipal reforms from Chicago's city council.

1877, The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 begins in Martinsburg, West Virginia, US, when Baltimore and Ohio Railroad workers have their wages cut for the second time in a year.

1881, Billy the Kid is shot and killed by Pat Garrett outside Fort Sumner.

1969, The United States $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 bills are officially withdrawn from circulation.

1976, Capital punishment is abolished in Canada.

2015, NASA's New Horizons probe performs the first flyby of Pluto, and thus completes the initial survey of the Solar System.

You have a very impressive knowledge!
Have you considered going on a game show?

To be honest, I am looking this all up on Wikipedia, but it is still fun to learn to more history.

No, I'd feel anxiety over that, however, I do watch some of them.


1207, King John of England expels Canterbury monks for supporting Archbishop Stephen Langton.

1815, Napoleon Bonaparte surrenders for the second time aboard HMS Bellerophon.

1834, The Spanish Inquisition is officially disbanded after nearly 356 years.

1870, Georgia becomes the last of the former Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.

1975, Space Race: Apollo–Soyuz Test Project features the dual launch of an Apollo spacecraft and a Soyuz spacecraft on the first joint Soviet-United States human-crewed flight. It was both the last launch of an Apollo spacecraft, and the Saturn family of rockets.

1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter gives his so-called malaise speech, where he characterizes the greatest threat to the country as "this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation" but in which he never uses the word malaise.

2006, Twitter is launched, becoming one of the largest social media platforms in the world, but I don't go there.

Countdown? I'm afraid I've never heard of it.