516 BC Dedication of the Second Temple at Jerusalem

9BCAugustus dedicates the Ara Pacis

1349 Jews of Freilsburg, Germany, are massacred

1467 Battle of Velke Kostolany: Mathias Corvinus defeats Bratríci

1592 Ippolito Aldobrandini elected Pope as Clement VIII (1592-1605)

1643 Battle of Adwalton Moor: Royalists defeat the Parliamentarians

1647 The Scots agree to sell King Charles I to the English Parliament

1648 Peace of Munster: Spain recognizes the independence of the Netherlands, ending the Eighty Years' War and clearing the way for the two countries to become allies against France for the rest of the century

1661 Oliver Cromwell, dead since 1658, is exhumed and ceremonially executed in punishment for the death of Charles I

1781 Articles of Confederation go into effect, establishing a perpetual union of "The United States of America"

1806 Prussia takes possession of Hanover

1835 Richard Lawrence attempts to assassinate Pres Andrew Jackson

1853 Napoleon III weds Eugenie Maria de Montijo y de Guzman

1862 The USS 'Monitor' is launched in Greenpoint, Brooklyn

1897 Theodore Roosevelt gives cousin Franklin Mahan's "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History" for his 15th birthday

1898 Theodore Roosevelt gives cousin Franklin Mahan's "The Interest of America in Sea Power" for his 16th birthday

1902 Anglo-Japanese alliance formed

1913 The Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire denounces the November 'Armistice of Çatalca' and resumes hostilities in the First Balkan War

1915 German submarine attack on Le Havre

1933 President Hindenburg names Adolph Hitler Chancellor of Germany

1935 Ezra Pound meets Mussolini, bores him with passages from the "Cantos"

1937 Second wave of Stalin's purges begin

1939 Hitler calls for the extermination of the Jews

1941 British troops capture Derna, Libya, from the Italians

1942 Bataan: Fil-Am troops begin clearing Japanese pockets along the coast.

1942 Burma: Japanese undertake a surprise attack on Moulmein

1942 Netherlands East Indies: Japanese attack Amboina

1943 British daylight raid on Berlin by 6 Mosquito bombers

1943 Guadalcanal: U.S. lands reinforcements and supplies

1943 Hitler promotes Friedrich Paulus, commanding the Sixth Army, surrounded at Stalingrad, to field marshal, with a hint that he should commit suicide

1943 New Guinea: Australian Kanga Force defeats Japanese at Wau

1944 Burma: Chinese forces oust Japanese from Taro Plain.

1944 PB2Y Coronado flying boats based at Midway conduct a night air raid on Japanese-held Wake

1945 Philippines - Cabanatuan: 126 US & Filipino raiders liberate 500 prisoners from a Japanese P/W camp

1945 Danzig: Soviet sub sinks German ship 'Wilhelm Gustloff', c 7,700 die -- worst loss of life in a single sinking in history

1956 Terrorists bomb the home of Martin Luther King, Jr.

1957 Congress accepts the "Eisenhower Doctrine"

1964 Military coup by Gen Nguyen Khanh in South-Vietnam

1968 The Tet Offensive

1972 "Bloody Sunday" - British troops kill 14 unarmed Catholic demonstrators in Derry

1976 George H. W. Bush becomes director of the CIA

1991 Battle of Khafji, Saudi Arabia, second day

1995 Islamist terror attack in Algiers, 42 die, 296 wounded