1559 Storm floods ravage Gorinchem, Dordrecht and Woudrichem, Netherlands
1590 Battle at Ivry French King Henri IV beats Catholic League
1644 England grants patent for Providence Plantations (now Rhode Island)
1653 Johan van Galen beats English fleet at Livorno
1689 Scotland dismisses Willem III and Mary Stuart as king and queen
1734 Prince Willem KHF van Orange marries George II's daughter Mary Anne
1743 First American town meeting (Boston's Faneuil Hall)
1794 Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin
1800 Luigi Chiaramonti crowned Pope Pius VII
1812 Congress authorizes war bonds to finance War of 1812
1821 African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church founded (New York)
1826 General Congress of South American States assembles at Panamá
1836 HMS Beagle/Charles Darwin leaves Australia
1840 José Zorilla's "El Zapatero y el Rey", premieres in Madrid
1843 Boston conducts its first town meeting (Faneuil Hall)
1843 James Douglas lands at Clover Point on Vancouver Island with 15 men to build new Hudson's Bay Company Fort Camosun (later Victoria); moving HBC trade headquarters from Fort Vancouver (now in Washington State)
1862 Battle of New Bern NC General Burnside conquers New Bern
1863 RADM Farragut's squadron of 7 ships forces way up Mississippi River to support Union troops at Vicksburg and Baton Rouge
1864 Rossini's "Petite Messe Solennelle", premieres in Paris France
1864 Samuel Baker discovers another source of the Nile in East Africa and names it Lake Albert Nyanza.
1864 Union troops occupy Fort de Russy, Louisiana
1870 California legislature approves act making Golden Gate Park possible
1879 Revolutionary physicist Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany.
1885 Gilbert and Sullivan's opera "Mikado", premieres in London
1888 2nd largest snowfall in New York NY history (21")
