193 – The Roman emperor Didius Julianus is assassinated.
1495 – A monk, John Cor, records the first known batch of Scotch whisky.
1533 – Anne Boleyn is crowned Queen of England.
1779 – Benedict Arnold, a general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, is court-martialed for malfeasance.
1792 – Kentucky is admitted as the 15th state of the United States.
1916 – Louis Brandeis becomes the first Jew appointed to the United States Supreme Court.
1918 – Allied Forces under John J. Pershing and James Harbord engage Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince.
1943 – BOAC Flight 777 is shot down over the Bay of Biscay by German Junkers Ju 88s, killing British actor Leslie Howard and leading to speculation that it was actually an attempt to kill British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
1980 – Cable News Network (CNN) begins broadcasting.
1988 – The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty comes into effect.
1990 – George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev sign a treaty to end chemical weapon production.
1999 – American Airlines Flight 1420 slides and crashes while landing at Little Rock National Airport, killing 11 people on a flight from Dallas to Little Rock.
2009 – Air France Flight 447 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. All 228 passengers and crew are killed.
2009 – General Motors files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It is the fourth largest United States bankruptcy in history.
2015 – A ship carrying 458 people capsizes on Yangtze river in China's Hubei province, killing 400 people.
