On This Day

This Day in History

1. 2024Airstrikes launched by Israel against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon killed more than 490 people.
2. 2019British travel company Thomas Cook Group immediately ceased operations, leaving approximately 600,000 tourists stranded worldwide.
3. 2016Major reforms strengthening rape laws were enacted in Germany following several high-profile sexual assaults.
4. 2010Teresa Lewis was executed via lethal injection, making her the first woman executed in Virginia since 1912 and the state's first female to die by that method.
5. 2008At the Seinäjoki University of Applied Sciences in Kauhajoki, Finland, a gunman shot and killed ten students before killing himself.
6. 2002The Mozilla Organization released the inaugural version of the Firefox web browser.
7. 1983En route from Pakistan, Gulf Air Flight 771 was bombed over the United Arab Emirates by the Abu Nidal Organization, killing all 112 people aboard.
8. 1952U.S. vice-presidential candidate Richard Nixon gave the Checkers speech, marking one of the earliest political uses of television to address the public directly.
9. 1920After forcing roughly 4,500 people to evacuate and causing $1.45 million in damages, the Louisiana hurricane dissipated over Kansas.
10. 1913The United Mine Workers of America initiated a strike against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, triggering the Colorado Coalfield War.
11. 1884When the French steamship Arctique ran aground on the northern coast of Cape Virgenes in Argentina, gold discovered during rescue efforts sparked the Tierra del Fuego gold rush.
12. 1803Forces of the British East India Company defeated Maratha troops at the Battle of Assaye, a decisive engagement of the Second Anglo-Maratha War.
13. 1780Patriot forces captured British officer John André during the American Revolutionary War, uncovering a plot by Continental Army general Benedict Arnold to surrender West Point, New York.
14. 1642The Battle of Powick Bridge, marking the first clash between the main field armies of the Royalists and Parliamentarians in the First English Civil War, resulted in a Royalist victory.
15. 1338In the initial naval battle of the Hundred Years' War, French forces defeated the English at the Battle of Arnemuiden.
16. 1122The Investiture Controversy concluded when Pope Callixtus II and Holy Roman emperor Henry V agreed to the Concordat of Worms.