1401

Turko-Mongol ruler Tamerlane (Timur) destroys Baghdad, killing 20,000.

1540

The marriage of King Henry VIII of England and his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, was annulled.

1755

General Edward Braddock’s British army was thoroughly defeated in the Battle of the Monongahela during the French and Indian War.

1762

Catherine the Great overthrew Peter III on this day in 1762 and began her reign as empress of Russia, leading her country into full participation in the political and cultural life of Europe and extending Russian territory.

1790

Russo-Swedish War: Second Battle of Svensksund – in the Baltic Sea, the Swedish Navy captures one third of the Russian fleet.

1816

The Congress of Tucumán declared Argentina’s independence from Spain.

1846

U.S. takes San Francisco from Mexico.

1856

Nikola Tesla—a Serbian American inventor and researcher who discovered the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery—was born this day or the next in Smiljan, Croatia.

1877

All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club begins its first lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon, then an outer-suburb of London.

1893

Daniel Hale Williams repairs the torn pericardium of a knife wound patient, James Cornish, without penicillin or blood transfusion.

1911

English novelist, poet, and painter Mervyn Peake, who was best known for the bizarre Titus Groan trilogy of novels and for his illustrations of his novels and of children’s stories, was born.

1947

In a ceremony held at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, General Dwight D. Eisenhower appoints Florence Blanchfield to be a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, making her the first woman in U.S. history to hold permanent military rank.

1955

Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and His Comets became the first rock-and-roll single to hit number one on Billboard’s pop charts.

1956

American actor Tom Hanks, who was perhaps best known for his cheerful everyman persona, was born.

1960

The Thresher, the first of a class of U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarines, was launched; it sank in 1963 in the worst submarine accident in history.

1962

Bob Dylan records “Blowin’ In The Wind”.

1971

Henry Kissinger visits the People’s Republic of China to negotiate a detente between the US and China.

2000

Venus Williams wins Wimbledon for the first time.

2001

The British TV series The Office, created and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, debuted and became a huge hit, spawning a popular American version and making Gervais a star.

2002

Fearing that there would not be enough eligible players to continue, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig stopped the annual All-Star Game in the 11th inning with the score tied at 7–7.

2011

South Sudan declared its independence after a referendum to secede from Sudan passed overwhelmingly.