1127 – Invading Jurchen soldiers from the Jin Dynasty besieged and sacked Bianjing (Kaifeng), the capital of the Song Dynasty of China, and abduct Emperor Qinzong and others, ending the Northern Song Dynasty.
1349 The Jewish population of Basel, Switzerland, believed by the residents to be the cause of the ongoing Black Death, was rounded up and incinerated.
1431 Judges’ investigations for the trial of Joan of Arc began in Rouen, France, the seat of the English occupation government.
1768 Philip Astley staged the first modern circus in London.
1773 – Cassandra Austen, English watercolourist and sister of Jane Austen, was born (d. 1845).
1793 Jean-Pierre Blanchard became the first person to fly in a balloon in the United States.
1799 British Prime Minister William Pitt introduced income tax to raise funds for the war against Napoleon.
1806 – Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson received a state funeral and was interred in St Paul’s Cathedral.
1816 Sir Humphry Davy tested the Davy lamp for miners at Hebburn Colliery.
1822 Portuguese prince Pedro I of Brazil decided to stay in Brazil against the orders of the Portuguese king João VI, starting the Brazilian independence process.
1854 Jennie Jerome, American society beauty and mother of Winston Churchill, was born (d. 1921).
1859 Carrie Chapman Catt, American suffragist leader, was born (d. 1947).
1861 The “Star of the West” incident near Charleston, South Carolina – considered by some historians to be the “First Shots of the American Civil War”.
1878 Umberto I became King of Italy.
1880 – The Great Gale of 1880 devastated parts of Oregon and Washington with high wind and heavy snow.
1894 New England Telephone and Telegraph installed the first battery-operated telephone switchboard in Lexington, Massachusetts.
1896 Warwick Braithwaite, New Zealand-born British conductor, was born (d. 1971).
1898 Gracie Fields, English music hall performer, was born (d. 1979).
1902 Saint Josemaría Escrivá, Spanish Catholic priest and founder of Opus Dei, was born (d. 1975) .
1903 Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred Tennyson, became the second Governor-General of Australia.
1905 According to the Julian Calendar which was used at the time, Russian workers staged a march on the Winter Palace that ended in the massacre by Tsarist troops known as Bloody Sunday, setting off the Russian Revolution of 1905.
1908 Simone de Beauvoir, French author, was born (d. 1986).
1911 – Gypsy Rose Lee, American burlesque entertainer, dancer, actress, and author (d. 1970)
1913 Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States, was born (d. 1994).
1916 The Battle of Gallipoli concluded with an Ottoman Empire victory when the last Allied forces were evacuated from the peninsula.
1916 Peter Twinn, English World War II code-breaker, was born (d. 2004) .
1920 Clive Dunn, British actor, was born (d. 2012).
1923 Katherine Mansfield died.
1928 Judith Krantz, American author, was born.
1933 Wilbur Smith, Zambian-British novelist, was born.
1939 Susannah York, British actress, was born.
1941 Joan Baez, American singer and activist, was born.
1942 Lee Kun-hee, Korean industrialist, chairman of Samsung, was born.
1944 – Jimmy Page, British musician and producer (Led Zeppelin), was born.
1948 – Bill Cowsill, American singer (The Cowsills), was born (d. 2006).
1951 – Crystal Gayle, American singer, was born.
1951 – The United Nations headquarters officially opened in New York City.
1953 – Morris Gleitzman, British-Australian children’s author, was born.
1978 – AJ McLean, American singer (Backstreet Boys), was born.
1980 – Sergio Garcia, Spanish golfer, was born.
2005 Rawhi Fattouh succeeded Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization .
2007 – Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone.
2011 – Iran Air Flight 277 crashed near Orumiyeh in the northeast of the country, killing 77 people.
2013 – A SeaStreak ferry travelling to lower Manhattan, New York City, crashed into the dock, injuring 85 people.
2015 – The perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris two days earlier were both killed after a hostage situation. Elsewhere, a second hostage situation, related to the Charlie Hebdo shooting, occurred at a Jewish market,Hypercacher, in the eastern Paris suburb of Vincennes.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia