• 536 - Byzantine General Belisarius enters Rome while the Ostrogothic garrison peacefully leaves the city, returning the old capital to its empire.
• 1425 - The Catholic University of Leuven is founded.
• 1793 - New York City's first daily newspaper, the American Minerva, is established by Noah Webster.
• 1824 - Patriot forces led by General Antonio José de Sucre defeat a Royalist army in the Battle of Ayacucho, putting an end to the Peruvian War of Independence.
• 1835 - The Republic of Texas captures San Antonio, Texas.
• 1851 - The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal, Quebec.
• 1856 - The Iranian city of Bushehr surrenders to occupying British forces.
• 1861 - American Civil War: The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War is established by the U.S. Congress.
• 1872 - In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first serving African-American governor of a U.S. state.
• 1875 - Massachusetts Rifle Association "America's Oldest Active Gun Club" is founded.
• 1888 - Statistician Herman Hollerith installs his computing device at the United States War Department.
• 1897 - Activist Marguerite Durand founds the feminist daily newspaper, La Fronde in Paris.
• 1905 - In France, the law separating church and state is passed.
• 1917 - In Palestine, Field Marshal Edmund Allenby captures Jerusalem.
• 1922 - Gabriel Narutowicz is announced the first president of Poland.
• 1931 - The Constituent Cortes approves the constitution which establishes the Second Spanish Republic.
• 1935 - Walter Liggett American newspaper editor and muckraker killed in gangland murder.
• 1937 - Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanjing - Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Asaka Yasuhiko launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanjing.
• 1940 - World War II: Operation Compass - British and Indian troops under the command of Major-General Richard O'Connor attack Italian forces near Sidi Barrani in Egypt.
• 1941 - World War II: The Republic of China, Cuba, Guatemala, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, and the Philippine Commonwealth, declare war on Germany and Japan.
• 1941 - World War II: The 19th Bombardment Group attacks Japanese ships off the coast of Vigan, Luzon.
• 1946 - The "Subsequent Nuremberg Trials" began with the "Doctors' Trial", prosecuting doctors alleged to be involved in human experimentation.
• 1950 - Harry Gold is sentenced to thirty years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
• 1953 - Red Scare: General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company.
• 1958 - Red Scare: The John Birch Society was founded in the United States.
• 1961 - The trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Israel ends with him being found guilty of 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people and membership of an outlawed organization.
• 1961 - Tanganyika becomes independent from Britain.
• 1968 - NLS (a system for which hypertext and the computer mouse were developed) is publicly demonstrated for the first time in San Francisco.
• 1979 - The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first and to date only human disease driven to extinction.
• 1987 - Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The First Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
• 1988 - The Michael Hughes Bridge in Sligo, Ireland is officially opened.
• 1990 - Lech Wałęsa becomes the first directly elected president of Poland.
• 2003 - A blast in the center of Moscow kills six people and wounds several more.
• 2006 - Moscow suffers its worst fire since 1977, killing 45 women in a drug rehabitational center.

Births