Events

• 1258 - Baghdad falls to the Mongols, and the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed.
• 1503 - Disfida di Barletta - Famous challenge between 13 Italian and 13 French knights near Barletta.
• 1542 - Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII of England, is executed for adultery.
• 1575 - Henry III of France is crowned at Rheims.
• 1575 - Henry III of France marries Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont.
• 1633 - Galileo Galilei arrives in Rome for his trial before the Inquisition.
• 1635 - The first public school in the U.S., Boston Latin School, is founded.
• 1668 - Spain recognizes Portugal as an independent nation.
• 1689 - William and Mary are proclaimed co-rulers of England.
• 1692 - Massacre of Glencoe : About 78 Macdonalds at Glen Coe, Scotland are killed early in the morning for not promptly pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange.
• 1815 - The Cambridge Union Society founded.
• 1866 - Jesse James and his gang commit the first armed bank robbery in United States history during peacetime in Liberty, Missouri.
• 1880 - Work begins on the covering of the Senne, burying Brussels's primary river and creating the modern central boulevards.
• 1880 - Thomas Edison observes the Edison effect.
• 1881 - The feminist newspaper La Citoyenne is first published in Paris by activist Hubertine Auclert.
• 1894 - Auguste and Louis Lumière patent the Cinematographe, a combination movie camera and projector.
• 1899 - Tallahassee, Florida records its all time coldest temperature of -2 degrees Fahrenheit.
• 1914 - Copyright: In New York City the ASCAP (for American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) is established to protect the copyrighted musical compositions of its members.
• 1920 - The Negro National League is formed.
• 1934 - The Soviet steamship Cheliuskin sinks in the Arctic Ocean.
• 1935 - A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh.
• 1945 - World War II: Red Army forces take Budapest, Hungary from Wehrmacht forces.
• 1945 - World War II: The Royal Air Force bombers were dispatched to Dresden, Germany to raid the city by massive aerial bombardment (see Bombing of Dresden in World War II).
• 1955 - Israel obtains 4 of the 7 Dead Sea scrolls.
• 1960 - Nuclear testing: France tests its first atomic bomb.
• 1971 - Vietnam War: Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invade Laos.
• 1974 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970, is exiled from the Soviet Union.
• 1975 - A fire erupts in the World Trade Center in New York City, New York.
• 1978 - Hilton bombing: a bomb explodes in a refuse truck outside the Hilton Hotel in Sydney, Australia, killing two refuse collectors and a policeman.
• 1979 - The intense February 13, 1979 Windstorm strikes western Washington and sinks a 1/2-mile-long section of the Hood Canal Bridge.
• 1981 - A series of sewer explosions destroys more than two miles of streets in Louisville, Kentucky.
• 1984 - Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• 1990 - German reunification: An agreement is reached for a two-stage plan to reunite Germany.
• 1991 - Gulf War: Two laser-guided "smart bombs" destroy a bunker in Baghdad. The bunker was being used as a military communications outpost and unknown to allied forces, as a shelter for Iraqi civilians.
• 1997 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 7,000 for the first time closing at 7,022.44.
• 2000 - The last original "Peanuts" comic strip appears in newspapers one day after Charles M. Schulz dies.
• 2001 - An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale hits El Salvador, killing at least 400.
• 2004 - The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovers the universe's largest known diamond, white dwarf star BPM 37093.
• 2007 - Taiwan opposition leader Ma Ying-jeou resigns as the chairman of the Kuomintang party after being indicted by the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office on charges of embezzlement during his tenure as the mayor of Taipei; Ma also announces his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election.
• 2008 - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia delivers a formal apology to the Stolen Generations, following over a decade of debate.