363 Battle of Ctesiphon: Roman Emperor Julian defeats Shah Shapur II, but fails to take the city

1108 Battle of Ucles: The Almoravids defeat the Castilians

1167 Battle of Monte Porzio/Tusculum: Holy Roman Empire defeats the Commune of Rome

1176 Battle of Legnano: Lombards defeat Frederick Barbarossa

1217 Vlerdingen, the Netherlands: 1st contingent of the Fifth Crusade sets out

1405 Battle of Skipton Moor: Henry IV defeats Archbishop Richard Scrope of York

1416 Battle of Gallipoli: Venetian fleet annihilates the Turkish fleet

1453 The Byzantine Empire falls: Sultan Mehemet II captures Constantinople amid a great slaughter

1652 Battle of Godwin Sands: Blake's English fleet defeats Tromp's Dutch off Dover

1660 The Restoration:Charles II ascends the English throne

1724 Pietro Francesco Orsini elected Pope as Benedict XIII (1724-1730)

1781 US frigate 'Alliance' captures HMS 'Atalanta' & 'Trepassy' off Nova Scotia

1848 Battles of Curtatone & Montanara: Tuscans & Neapolitans defeat the Austrians

1859 Garibaldi liberates Como from the Austrians

1864 Archduke Maximilian of Austria arrives in Mexico to become Emperor

1877 HMS 'Shah' captures the mutinous Peruvian ironclad 'Huascar'; first use of mobile torpedo in combat, a miss

1899 Iosip Dzhugashvili is expelled from the Orthodox Seminary at Tiblisi, for failure to take exams; later adopts the name, Stalin.

1905 Pogrom against the Jews of Brisk, Lithuania

1914 The British liner SS 'Empress of Ireland' is rammed and sunk in St Lawrence, 1024 die

1940 Arthur Seyss-Inquart made Reichscommissar of The Hague, Netherlands

1943 Attu: Japanese make a major "Banzai" attack

1943 US initiates meat and cheese rationing

1944 Biak: Unsuccessful Japanese tank assault on American troops.

1945 Okinawa: the 5th Marines storm Shuri Castle

1957 Algerian Rebels kill 336 "collaborators"

1989 Student protesters in China erect a replica of the Statue of Liberty

1993 Neo-Nazis kill five Turkish women in Solingen, Germany