1606 – Guy Fawkes is executed for plotting against Parliament and British King James in what is now called the Gunpowder Plot.
1865 – Robert E. Lee becomes general-in-chief of the Confederate Army.
1915 – Germany is the first to make large-scale use of poison gas in warfare in the Battle of Bolimow against Russia.
1990 – McDonald’s opens its first restaurant in the Soviet Union, specifically in Moscow.