0079 Mt Vesuvius erupts, buries Pompeii & Herculaneum
0410 Rome overrun by Visigoths, symbolized fall of Western Roman Empire
1313 Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor, dies.
1456 The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed.
1572 King Charles IX orders massacre of thousands of French Protestants
1662 Act of Uniformity requires English to accept book of Common Prayer
1680 Death of Colonel (Thomas) Blood, Irish adventurer who stole Crown Jewels from Tower of London in 1671.
1690 Calcutta, India, is founded by the British East India Company.
1690 Job Charnock establishes an English trading post in West Bengal, considered the official founding of India's largest city, Calcutta.
1751 Thomas Colley executed in England for drowning supposed witch
1814 British sack Washington, DC, White House burned
1814 Washington, D.C. is burned by the British.
1821 New Mexico gains its independence from Spain.
1853 The first potato chips prepared by Chef George Crum (Saratoga Springs, NY)
1854 National emigration convention meets in Cleveland
1857 Thirty-one people die when ship Lady Bird collides with another vessel off the State of Victoria in Australia
1869 Waffle iron invented
1891 Thomas Edison patents motion picture camera
1909 Workers start pouring concrete for Panama Canal
1912 Alaska becomes a U.S. territory.
1912 NYC ticker tape parade for Jim Thorpe & victorious US olympians
1912 Territory of Alaska organized
1912 US passes Anti-gag law, federal employees right to petition the govt
1916 Official inauguration of the Australian Comforts Fund (ACF) The ACF coordinated the activities of the various State "patriotic funds" set up in 1914 to collect money to send comfort parcels to service personnel overseas
1918 Sgt. Samuel Forsyth, NZ Engineers, attached to 2nd Battalion, Auckland Infantry Regiment, won the Victoria Cross at Grevillers, France
