1240 A Novgorodian army led by Alexander Nevsky defeated the Swedes in the Battle of the Neva.
1410 Battle of Grunwald: allied forces of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeated the army of the Teutonic Order.
1573 Inigo Jones, English architect, was born (d. 1652).
1606 Rembrandt, Dutch artist, was born (d. 1669).
1685 James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth was executed at Tower Hill after his defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor.
1741 Alexei Chirikov sighted land in Southeast Alaska and sent men ashore in a longboat, making them the first Europeans to visit Alaska.
1779 Clement Clarke Moore, American educator, author, and poet, was born (d. 1863).
1789 Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette, was named by acclamation colonel-general of the new National Guard of Paris.
1815 Napoléon Bonaparte surrendered aboard HMS Bellerophon.
1823 A fire destroyed the ancient Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Wallsin Rome.
1838 Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered the Divinity School Address at Harvard Divinity School, discounting Biblical miracles and declaring Jesus a great man, but not God. The Protestant community reacted with outrage.
1850 Mother Cabrini, Italian-born Catholic saint, was born (d. 1917).
1870 Reconstruction era of the United States: Georgia became the last of the former Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.
1870 Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory were transferred to Canada from the Hudson’s Bay Company, and the province of Manitoba and the North-West Territories were established from these territories.
1870 The Kingdom of Prussia and the Second French Empire started theFranco-Prussian War.
1888 The stratovolcano Mount Bandai erupted killing approximately 500 people.
1905 Dorothy Fields, American librettist and lyricist, was born (d. 1974).
1906 Rudolf “Rudi” Uhlenhaut, German automotive engineer and test driver (Mercedes Benz), was born (d. 1989).
1911 Edward Shackleton, English explorer, ws born (d. 1994).
1914 Akhtar Hameed Khan, pioneer of Microcredit in developing countries, was born (d. 1999).
1914 – The first large group of men wounded at Gallipoli to return to New Zealand arrived in Wellington on the Willochra.
1914 Hammond Innes, English writer, was born (d. 1998).
1918 World War I: the Second Battle of the Marne began near the River Marne with a German attack.
1918 – Joan Roberts, American actress, was born.
1919 Iris Murdoch, Irish writer, was born (d. 1999).
1920 The Polish Parliament establishes Autonomous Silesian Voivodeshipbefore the Polish-German plebiscite.
1926 Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentine dictator, was born (d. 2003).
1927 Massacre of July 15, 1927: 89 protesters were killed by the Austrian police in Vienna.
1929 First weekly radio broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir radio show, Music and the Spoken Word.
1931 Clive Cussler, American author, was born.
1933 Jack Lovelock’s set a world record for a mile run at Princeton University, beating the old record for the mile, held by Jules Ladoumegue, by almost two seconds. It was dubbed the ‘greatest mile of all time’ byTime Magazine.
1934 Continental Airlines commenced operations.
1943 Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Irish astrophysicist, was born.
1946 Linda Ronstadt, American singer, was born.
1946 Hassanal Bolkiah, Sultan of Brunei, was born.
1947 Peter Banks, British guitarist (Yes), was born.
1954 First flight of the Boeing 367-80, prototype for both the Boeing 707 and C-135 series.
1955 Eighteen Nobel laureates signed the Mainau Declaration against nuclear weapons, later co-signed by thirty-four others.
1956 Marky Ramone, American musician (Ramones), was born.
1959 The steel strike of 1959 began, leading to significant importation of foreign steel for the first time in United States history.
1979 U.S.President Jimmy Carter gave his famous “malaise” speech, where he characterised 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.”
1983 The Orly airport attack in Paris left 8 people dead and 55 injured.
1996 A Belgian Air Force C-130 Hercules carrying the Royal Netherlands Army marching band crashed on landing at Eindhoven Airport.
2002 Anti-Terrorism Court of Pakistan handed down the death sentence to British born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and life terms to three others suspected of murdering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
2003 AOL Time Warner disbanded Netscape Communications Corporation. The Mozilla Foundation was established on the same day.
2014 – – A train derailed on the Moscow Metro, killing at least 24 and injuring more than 160 others.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia