1485 – The Battle of Bosworth Field, the death of Richard III and the end of the House of Plantagenet.
1559 – Bartolomé Carranza, Spanish archbishop, is arrested for heresy.
1639 – Madras (now Chennai), India, is founded by the British East India Company on a sliver of land bought from local Nayak rulers.
1642 – Charles I calls the English Parliament traitors. The English Civil War begins.
1654 – Jacob Barsimson arrives in New Amsterdam. He is the first known Jewish immigrant to America.
1717 – Spanish troops land on Sardinia.
1780 – James Cook's ship HMS Resolution returns to England (Cook having been killed on Hawaii during the voyage).
1791 – Beginning of the Haitian Slave Revolution in Saint-Domingue.
1798 – French troops land in Kilcummin harbour, County Mayo, Ireland to aid Wolfe Tone's United Irishmen's Irish Rebellion.
1827 – José de La Mar becomes President of Peru.
1831 – Nat Turner's slave rebellion commences just after midnight in Southampton, Virginia, leading to the deaths of more than 50 whites and several hundred African Americans who are killed in retaliation for the uprising.
1848 – The United States annexes New Mexico.
1849 – The first air raid in history. Austria launches pilotless balloons against the city of Venice.
1851 – The first America's Cup is won by the yacht America.
1864 – 12 nations sign the First Geneva Convention. The Red Cross is formed.
1875 – The Treaty of Saint Petersburg between Japan and Russia is ratified, providing for the exchange of Sakhalin for the Kuril Islands.
1902 – Cadillac Motor Company is founded.
1902 – Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to ride in an automobile.
1910 – Korea is annexed by Japan with the signing of the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, beginning a period of Japanese rule of Korea that lasted until the end of World War II.
1914 – World War I: in Belgium, British and German troops clash for the first time in the war.
1922 – Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of the Irish Free State Army is shot dead during an Anti-Treaty ambush at Béal na mBláth, County Cork, during the Irish Civil War.
1926 – Gold is discovered in Johannesburg, South Africa.
1932 – The BBC first experiments with television broadcasting. (See also Timeline of the BBC.)
1934 – Bill Woodfull of Australia becomes the only cricket captain to twice regain The Ashes.
1941 – World War II: German troops reach Leningrad, leading to the siege of Leningrad.
1942 – World War II: Brazil declares war on Germany and Italy.
1944 – World War II: Romania is captured by the Soviet Union.
1944 – World War II: Holocaust of Kedros in Crete by German forces
1949 – Queen Charlotte earthquake: Canada's largest earthquake since the 1700 Cascadia earthquake
1950 – Althea Gibson becomes the first black competitor in international tennis.
1952 – The penal colony on Devil's Island is permanently closed.
1961 – Ida Siekmann died attempting to cross the Berlin Wall.
1962 – An attempt to assassinate French president Charles de Gaulle fails.
1962 – The NS Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered cargo ship, completes its maiden voyage.
1963 – American Joe Walker in an X-15 test plane reaches an altitude of 106 km (66 mi).
1966 – Labor movements NFWA and AWOC merge to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), predecessor of the United Farm Workers.
1968 – Pope Paul VI arrives in Bogotá, Colombia. It is the first visit of a pope to Latin America.
1971 – J. Edgar Hoover and John Mitchell announce the arrest of 20 of the Camden 28.
1972 – Rhodesia is expelled by the IOC for its racist policies.
1978 – The Frente Sandinista de Liberacion or FSLN occupies national palace in Nicaragua.
1985 – Manchester Air Disaster sees 55 people killed when a fire breaks out on a commercial aircraft at Manchester Airport.
1989 – The first ring of Neptune is discovered.
1989 – Nolan Ryan strikes out Rickey Henderson to become the first Major League Baseball pitcher to record 5,000 strikeouts.
1992 – FBI HRT sniper Lon Horiuchi shoots and kills Vicki Weaver during an 11-day siege at her home at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
1996 – Bill Clinton signs welfare reform into law, representing major shift in US welfare policy
2003 – Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is suspended after refusing to comply with a federal court order to remove a rock inscribed with the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court building.
2004 – A version of The Scream and Madonna, two paintings by Edvard Munch, are stolen at gunpoint from a museum in Oslo, Norway.
2006 – Pulkovo Aviation Enterprise Flight 612 crashes near the Russian border over eastern Ukraine, killing all 170 people on board.
2007 – The Texas Rangers rout the Baltimore Orioles 30–3, the most runs scored by a team in modern MLB history.
2007 – The Storm botnet, a botnet created by the Storm Worm, sends out a record 57 million e-mails in one day