• 1472 - Orkney and Shetland are left by Norway to Scotland, due to a dowry payment.
• 1547 - Edward VI of England is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.
• 1792 - The Postal Service Act, establishing the United States Post Office Department, is signed by President George Washington.
• 1798 - Louis Alexandre Berthier removes Pope Pius VI from power.
• 1810 - Andreas Hofer, Tyrolean patriot and leader of rebellion against Napoleon's forces, was executed.
• 1816 - Gioachino Rossini's The Barber of Seville debuts at Teatro Argentina, with a fiasco.
• 1835 - Concepción, Chile is destroyed by an earthquake.
• 1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Olustee occurs - the largest battle fought in Florida during the war.
• 1872 - In New York City the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens.
• 1873 - The University of California opens its first medical school in San Francisco, California.
• 1901 - The legislature of Hawaii Territory convenes for the first time.
• 1909 - Publication of the Futurist Manifesto in the French journal Le Figaro.
• 1913 - King O'Malley drives in the first survey peg to mark commencement of work on the construction of Canberra.
• 1931 - California gets the go-ahead by the U.S. Congress to build the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
• 1933 - The Congress of the United States proposes the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution, which would end Prohibition in the United States.
• 1935 - Caroline Mikkelsen becomes the first woman to set foot in Antarctica.
• 1942 - Lieutenant Edward O'Hare becomes America's first World War II flying ace.
• 1943 - American movie studio executives agree to allow the Office of War Information to censor movies.
• 1943 - The Parícutin volcano begins to form in Parícutin, Mexico.
• 1944 - World War II: The "Big Week" ended with American bomber raids on German aircraft manufacturing centers.
• 1944 - World War II: The United States takes Eniwetok Island.
• 1947 - State of Prussia ceases to exist.
• 1952 - Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American umpire in organized baseball by being authorized to be a substitute umpire in the Southwestern International League.
• 1959 - The Avro Arrow program to design and manufacture supersonic jet fighters in Canada is cancelled by the Diefenbaker government amid much political debate.
• 1962 - Mercury program: While aboard Friendship 7, John Glenn orbits the earth three times in 4 hours, 55 minutes, becoming the first American to orbit the earth.
• 1965 - Ranger 8 crashes into the moon after a successful mission of photographing possible landing sites for the Apollo program astronauts.
• 1976 - The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization disbands.
• 1986 - Soviets launch Mir.
• 1987 - Unabomber: In Salt Lake City, Utah, a bomb explodes in a computer store.
• 1991 - A gigantic statue of Albania's long-time dictator, Enver Hoxha, is brought down in the Albanian capital, Tirana, by mobs of angry protesters.
• 1992 - The FA Premier League is founded.
• 1998 - American figure skater Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest gold-medalist at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.
• 2002 - In Reqa Al-Gharbiya, Egypt, a fire on a train injures over 65 and kills at least 370.
• 2005 - Spain becomes the first country to vote in a referendum on ratification of the proposed Constitution of the European Union, passing it by a substantial margin, but on a low turnout.

Births