312 – Constantine the Great is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross.
1553 – Condemned as a heretic, Michael Servetus is burned at the stake just outside Geneva.
1795 – The United States and Spain sign the Treaty of Madrid, which establishes the boundaries between Spanish colonies and the U.S.
1810 – United States annexes the former Spanish colony of West Florida.
1914 – The British super-dreadnought battleship HMS Audacious (23,400 tons), is sunk off Tory Island, north-west of Ireland, by a minefield laid by the armed German merchant-cruiser Berlin.The loss was kept an official secret in Britain until November 14 1918. The sinking was witnessed and photographed by passengers on RMS Olympic sister ship of RMS Titanic.
1936 – Mrs. Wallis Simpson files for divorce which would eventually allow her to marry King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom, thus forcing his abdication from the throne.
1962 – Major Rudolf Anderson of the United States Air Force becomes the only direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance airplane is shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile.
1964 – Ronald Reagan delivers a speech on behalf of Republican candidate for president, Barry Goldwater. The speech launched his political career and came to be known as "A Time for Choosing."
1967 – Catholic priest Philip Berrigan and others of the 'Baltimore Four' protest the Vietnam War by pouring blood on Selective Service records.
1992 – United States Navy radioman Allen R. Schindler Jr. is brutally murdered by shipmate Terry M. Helvey for being gay, precipitating first military, then national, debate about gays in the military that resulted in the United States "Don't ask, don't tell" military policy.
1994 – Gliese 229B is the first Substellar Mass Object to be unquestionably identified.
1995 – Latvia applies for membership in the European Union.
11999 – Gunmen open fire in the Armenian Parliament, killing Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan, Parliament Chairman Karen Demirchyan, and six other members.
2005 – Riots begin in Paris after the deaths of two Muslim teenagers.
