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August 7 in history

199 sourced entries recorded on August 7, from 317 CE to 2025 CE. Every line is quoted from the revision it came from.

Events

  • 626In the waters of the Golden Horn, the Persian fleet is destroyed while ferrying reinforcements. The Avars, having suffered terrible losses, running short of food and supplies, burn their siege engines. They abandon the siege and retreat to the Balkan Peninsula. The Byzantines achieve a decisive victory at Blachernae, under the protection of the Church of the Virgin Mary.source
  • 768Pope Stephen III succeeds Paul I as the 94th pope of the Catholic Church. The antipope Constantine II is overthrown at Rome, through intervention by King Desiderius of the Lombards, after a brief reign (see 767).source
  • 1078Battle of Mellrichstadt: Emperor Henry IV defeats the German anti-king Rudolf of Rheinfelden, duke of Swabia, near Mellrichstadt (modern Germany).source
  • 1106Emperor Henry IV escapes his captors at Ingelheim. He enters into negotiations at Cologne with English, French and Danish noblemen, and begins to collect an army to oppose his son Henry V but dies at Liège after a 49-year reign. Henry leads a successful expedition against Count Robert II of Flanders and is forced to swear his allegiance to him.source
  • 1325Battle of Varey: The 16-year-old Guigues VIII, local ruler (dauphin) of Vienne, defeats the Savoyard forces at Saint-Jean-le-Vieux. During the battle, a Burgundian cavalry charge is repulsed and is forced back to the Savoyard camp. With the assistance of the Varey garrison, Guigues pillages the camp and takes John I, Count of Auxerre, prisoner.source
  • 1409The Council of Pisa closes.source
  • 1420Construction of the dome of Florence Cathedral is started, after Filippo Brunelleschi wins the commission for his "double shell" design.source
  • 1428The Valais witch trials begin in Swiss Savoy.source
  • 1445A papal bull is issued by Pope Eugene IV declaring that the Chaldean Christians and the Maronites of Cyprus are in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.source
  • 1450Edmund Oldhall is appointed Bishop of Meath.source
  • 1476The Battle of Cabo São Vicente is fought as two Portuguese galleys, aided by 11 armed French pirate ships, encounter a set of five armed Spanish merchant ships. The French ships use incendiary weapons, though the fire destroys four of their own vessels as well as three enemy ships.source
  • 1479The Battle of Guinegate is fought in the Duchy of Burgundy at what is now the French town of Enguinegatte, as at least 12,000 French infantry, 4,000 cavalry and 8,000 archers commanded by Philippe de Crèvecœur d'Esquerdes are confronted by Maximilian, Duke of Burgundy whose 16,000 men have superior weapons, including the pike. With 11,000 troops grouped in formations of 100 men apiece using the pike square formation" borrowed from Switzerland, the Burgundian troops defeat the French invasion.source
  • 1479A French army is defeated at the Battle of Guinegatesource
  • 1484The Treaty of Bagnolo is signed, ending the War of Ferrara fought in Italy between the Republic of Venice and the Duchy of Ferrara after two years. Ferrara loses most of its territories which Venice had conquered north of the River Po, while Ferrara's Duke Ercole I d'Este regains his territories in Ariano nel Polesine, Corbola, Adria, Melara, Castelnovo Bariano and Ficarolo.source
  • 1485After departing France and sailing around the south coast of the island of Britain, Henry Tudor and his troops enter Mill Bay and land near Dale, Pembrokeshire Wales without opposition, and begin marching toward London to attack King Richard, camping at Haverfordwest. From there, the Tudor supporters march north to Cardigan; Llwyn Dafydd; Llanilar, Aberystwyth; Machynlleth, then turn eastward at Mathafarn on August 14.source
  • 1495The Diet of Worms is adjourned in the Holy Roman Empire after more than four months, with an agreement among the constituent states to enact the Ewiger Landfriede (Eternal Peace), outlawing feuds between the states and the Holy Roman Empire's family groups, and to resolve controversies in a new Imperial Court (Reichskammergericht) and the Aulic Council.source
  • 1514King Henry VIII of England concludes an independent peace treaty with France in the War of the League of Cambrai, negotiated by Thomas Wolsey.source
  • 1524The coronation of Frederick I of Denmark takes place in Copenhagen.source
  • 1548Mary, Queen of Scots, leaves for France.source
  • 1562The Treaty of Mozhaysk is signed between Denmark and Russia to avoid going to war against each other over the Kingdom of Livonia, now divided into Estonia and Latvia.source
  • 1584In Lima in the Viceroyalty of Peru, Italian printer Antonio Ricardo receives official permission to set up the first printing press in South America, and prints the first publication there, Pragmatica, a four-page outline of how the new Gregorian calendar (adopted 1582) works.source
  • 1588The English fleet defeats the Spanish fleet off the coast of Flanders.source
  • 1620In a battle at Les Ponts-de-Cé in France, King Louis XIII defeats troops led by his mother, Marie de' Medici.source
  • 1620Battle of Les Ponts-de-Cé, Poitou: French king Louis XIII defeats his mother Marie de' Medici.source
  • 1620The mother of astronomer Johannes Kepler is arrested for witchcraft.source
  • 1637Merchants of London formally protest seizure of English tobacco shipments to Holland.source
  • 1641ship money declared illegal by Parliament.source
  • 1647Oliver Cromwell takes control of Parliament with the New Model Army, an attempt by Presbyterian MPs to raise the City of London having been unsuccessful.source
  • 1659As Booth's Uprising spreads to Liverpool, Thomas Myddelton, Randolph Egerton and fellow royalists take control of the town of Wrexham in Wales and proclaim Charles II to be King.source
  • 1659as Booth's Uprising spreads to Liverpool, Thomas Myddelton, Randolph Egerton and fellow royalists take control of the town of Wrexham in Wales and proclaim Charles II to be King.source
  • 1661The Sovereignty Act was signed by the estates of the realm, turning Norway into an absolute monarchy.source
  • 1679The brigantine Le Griffon, commissioned by René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is towed to the southern end of the Niagara River, to become the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes of North America.source
  • 1704Battle of Orford Ness.source
  • 1711Capture of the galleon San Joaquin: Spanish galleon San Joaquin in a treasure fleet sailing from Cartagena de Indias (modern-day Colombia) to Spain surrenders after an engagement with five British ships.source
  • 1711capture of the galleon San Joaquin: Spanish galleon San Joaquin in a treasure fleet sailing from Cartagena de Indias (modern-day Colombia) to Spain surrenders after an engagement with five British ships.source
  • 1717Charles Paulet, 2nd Duke of Bolton, sworn in as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.source
  • 1721The wedding of Crown Prince Christian and Sophie Magdalene of Brandenburg-Kulmbach takes place at Pretzsch Castle in Saxony.source
  • 1722The Russo-Persian War begins.source
  • 1726English-born pirate Nicholas Brown is captured near Xtabi, Jamaica.source
  • 1749Mary Musgrove Bosomworth, a woman of mixed British and Creek Indian ancestry, presents herself as Coosaponakeesa, Queen of the Creek Indians and marches with 200 Creek Indians into the town of Savannah, Georgia. During her confrontation with British colonial authorities, she and her husband Thomas Bosomworth demand payment of "nearly twenty-five thousand dollars" in compensation for property taken from the Creek Indians, before the British authorities determine that she doesn't have the authority to speak for the tribe.source
  • 1753The Unity of Brethren, a branch of the Moravian Church, receives a grant the Wachovia Tract, 99,985 acres of land (approximately 157 square miles), in western North Carolina, for the benefit of German-speaking immigrants to America. The area now includes Winston-Salem, North Carolina.source
  • 1757August 3–9 – French and Indian War: A French army under Louis-Joseph de Montcalm forces the English to surrender Fort William Henry. The French army's Indian allies slaughter the surviving men, women and children.source
  • 1765armed mutiny at Maidstone County Gaol.source
  • 1768The palace of the Ottoman Grand Vizier is destroyed by a fire in Constantinoplesource
  • 1771foundation stone of Clifton House, Belfast, the Belfast Charitable Society's poorhouse, is laid.source
  • 1782George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit (or the Order of the Purple Heart) to honor soldiers' merit in battle (reinstated later by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and renamed to the more poetic "Purple Heart", to honor soldiers wounded in action).source
  • 1782Étienne Maurice Falconet's Bronze Horseman statue of Tsar Peter the Great is unveiled in Saint Petersburg.source
  • 1789The United States Department of War is established.source
  • 1791George Hammond is appointed as Great Britain's first minister to the United States.source
  • 1803Expedition to accomplish first Russian circumnavigation of the earth begins.source
  • 1809The Pegasus discovers Port Pegasus on Stewart Island/Rakiura.source
  • 1812130 Filibusters of the Gutiérrez–Magee Expedition cross from Louisiana into Spanish Texas, soon after they capture the town of Nacogdoches.source
  • 1814Pope Pius VII decrees the bull Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum, reestablishing the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) all over the world, after having approved their survival and existence in Russia.source
  • 1815Napoleonic Wars: Napoleon is transferred to HMS Northumberland, to begin his forced and final second exile, on the remote island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. Andrew Roberts, Napoleon and Wellington: The Battle of Waterloo- and the Great Commanders who Fought it (Simon and Schuster, 2001) p199source
  • 1819Battle of Boyacá: Simón Bolívar is victorious over the Royalist Army in Colombia. Colombia acquires its definitive independence from Spanish rule.source
  • 1820The 1820 United States census is conducted, eventually determining a population of 11,176,475.source
  • 1821August 7 (O.S.)/August 19 (N.S.) – Navarino massacre: Greek rebels massacre 3,000 inhabitants of the city of Navarino.source
  • 1822August 5–13 – A sequence of earthquakes occurs in the northern part of the Ottoman Empire, causing severe damage from Gaziantep to Antakya in modern Turkey and from Aleppo to Khan Sheikhun in modern Syria. At least 20,000 people are killed.source
  • 1824The First Anglo-Ashanti War ends when forces of the Ashanti Empire flee the field.source
  • 1824First Anglo-Ashanti War ends when forces of the Ashanti Empire flee the field.source
  • 1831American Baptist minister William Miller preaches his first sermon on the Second Advent of Christ in Dresden, New York, launching the Advent Movement in the United States.source
  • 1832William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, has his coach attacked by an angry mob on his first official visit to Canterbury because of his opposition to the Reform Act in the United Kingdom.source
  • 1832William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, has his coach attacked by an angry mob on his first official visit to Canterbury because of his opposition to the Great Reform Act.source
  • 1836St Andrew's Cathedral, Dundee (Roman Catholic) opened.source
  • 1840Chimney Sweepers and Chimneys Regulation Act 1840 prohibits the employment of children under the age of 21 as chimney sweeps.source
  • 1851Poor Relief (Ireland) Act provides for the establishment of dispensaries.source
  • 1858A football match, played under an unknown set of rules, is held between Melbourne Grammar School and Scotch College.source
  • 1861Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein founded by Franz Liszt and Franz Brendel.source
  • 1862Companies Act 1862 facilitates creation of limited liability companies.source
  • 1862Ferry from Porthmadog to Talsarnau sinks with the loss of 8 lives.source
  • 1863Johanna Hedén becomes the first licensed female surgeon by passing her exam as feldsher.source
  • 1867September 20 – The first Canadian election sees John A. Macdonald's Conservatives elected to government and Macdonald becomes the Dominion's first prime minister.source
  • 1868The Roman Catholic Diocese of Copenhagen is established.source
  • 1871Banco de Concepcion, predecessor of Itaú Unibanco, a major financial services provider in South America, is founded in Chile.source
  • 1874Church Patronage (Scotland) Act 1874 abolishes patronage in the appointment of ministers to the Church of Scotland.source
  • 1874Public Worship Regulation Act prohibits ritualistic practices in the Church of England.source
  • 1878the Christian Mission, co-founded by (the now) General William and Catherine Booth in London in 1865, has its name changed to The Salvation Army.source
  • 1888Whitechapel murders: The body of London prostitute Martha Tabram is found, a possible victim of Jack the Ripper.source
  • 1890Anna Månsdotter became the last woman in Sweden to be executed.source
  • 189324 people are drowned at Aberavon when a boat carrying trippers on a Sunday school outing from Ystrad Rhondda capsizes in the bay. A survivor claimed that the inexperienced passengers had been frightened by the waves and all ran to one side of the boat.source
  • 1895The Aljaž Tower, a symbol of the Slovenes, is erected on Mount Triglav.source
  • 1897Euclides da Cunha goes to the sertão ("backland"), as war correspondent for O Estado de S. Paulo.source
  • 1898Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) is foundedsource
  • 1904The reinauguration of Ribe Cathedral.source
  • 1914The United Kingdom (Japan's ally since 1902) officially asked Japan for assistance in destroying the raiders from the Imperial German Navy in and around Chinese waters.source
  • 1914Battle of Mulhouse: France launches its first attack of the war, in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to recover the province of Alsace from Germany, beginning the Battle of the Frontiers.source
  • 1916Portugal joins the Allies.source
  • 1916August bank holiday abandoned.source
  • 1920July 30–August 8 – The 1st World Scout Jamboree is held at Olympia, London.source
  • 1927The Peace Bridge opens between Fort Erie, Ontario, and Buffalo, New York.source
  • 1930R. B. Bennett takes office as the eleventh Prime Minister of Canada.source
  • 1930Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. They are hanged; James Cameron survives. This will be the last recorded lynching of African Americans in the Northern United States.source
  • 1932The Law of Spikelets is enacted.source
  • 1940Unemployment insurance is introducedsource
  • 1941WWII: British submarine HMS Severn sinks an Italian Marconi-class submarine.source
  • 1942August 3–15 – WWII: Operation Pedestal – A British convoy of 14 merchant ships with a massive escort of two battleships, 4 aircraft carriers, 7 cruisers, 32 destroyers and smaller ships commanded by Admiral Edward Neville Syfret, sets sail to Malta under relentless attacks by day and night from enemy submarines, aircraft and Axis surface forces. The 55,000 tons of food and fuel (particularly from oil tanker SS Ohio) delivered by this convoy saves Malta from surrender and allows Malta-based aircraft and submarines to resume their attacks against Rommel's supply lines, although over 500 British sea- and airmen are killed and many ships (including carrier HMS Eagle (1918)) are lost.source
  • 1942WWII: Guadalcanal campaign – The U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps start the first American offensive of the war, with an amphibious landing on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.source
  • 1944IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).source
  • 1945U.S. President Harry Truman announces the successful atomic bombing of Hiroshima, while he is returning from the Potsdam Conference aboard the U.S. Navy heavy cruiser USS Augusta, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.source
  • 1946The Soviet Union escalates the Turkish Straits crisis through a diplomatic demand to Turkey.source
  • 1947Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft, the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands, after a 101-day, 4,300 mile, voyage across the Eastern Pacific Ocean, demonstrating that prehistoric peoples could have traveled to the Central Pacific islands from South America.source
  • 1947Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft, the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 4,300-mile journey across the Pacific Ocean, proving that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.source
  • 1947The Bombay Municipal Corporation formally takes over the Bombay Electric Supply and Transport (BEST).source
  • 1947The Bombay Municipal Corporation formally takes over the Bombay Electric Supply and Transport (BEST).source
  • 1950Laureano Gómez of the Conservative Party becomes the 18th President of Colombia.source
  • 1956Seven army ammunition trucks filled with dynamite explode in Cali, killing more than 1,000 people.source
  • 1956Seven ammunition trucks loaded with 1,053 boxes of dynamite explode in Cali, Colombia. Death estimates range from 1,300 to 10,000, in a city that at this time has 120,000 inhabitants.source
  • 19581958 East Pakistan-India border skirmishes, a skirmish between East Pakistan and the Indian Army in Laxmipur.source
  • 1959Explorer program: The United States launches Explorer 6 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.source
  • 1959The Roseburg Blast in Oregon, caused when a truck carrying explosives catches fire, kills 14 and causes $12 million worth of damage.source
  • 1960The world's first standard gauge passenger preserved railway, the Bluebell Railway, opens to the public in southern England.source
  • 1961Vostok 2 lands in the Soviet Union.source
  • 1964Vietnam War: The United States Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces.source
  • 1965Tunku Abdul Rahman, Prime Minister of Malaysia, recommends the expulsion of Singapore from the Federation of Malaysia following a deterioration of PAP–UMNO relations, negotiating its separation with Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore.source
  • 1966The Storskog border control between Norway and the Soviet Union is opened. It remains the only legal border crossing from Norway to Russia till this day.source
  • 1967A general strike in the old quarter of Jerusalem protests Israel's unification of the city.source
  • 1971Apollo 15 returns to Earth.source
  • 1974French acrobat Philippe Petit walks across a high wire slung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York.source
  • 1976Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars.source
  • 1980August 7–31 – Lech Wałęsa leads the first of many strikes at the Gdańsk Shipyard in the Polish People's Republic.source
  • 1980July 31–August 11: Hurricane Allen.source
  • 1983Soviet authorities pass harsher punishments for drunkenness and absenteeism, responding to public calls to curb high rates of alcoholism.source
  • 1985Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan's first astronauts.source
  • 1987The Colombian frigate Caldas enters Venezuelan waters near the Los Monjes Archipelago, sparking the Caldas frigate crisis between both nations.source
  • 1987American Lynne Cox becomes the first person to swim the Bering Strait, crossing from Little Diomede Island to Big Diomede in 2 hours and 5 minutes.source
  • 1989The presidents of five Central American countries agree that the U.S.-backed contras fighting the government of Nicaragua should be disbanded and evicted from their bases in Honduras by December 5.source
  • 1989U.S. Representative Mickey Leland (D-TX) and fifteen others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.source
  • 1995The Chilean government declares a state of emergency in the southern half of the country in response to an event of intense cold, wind, rain and snowfall known as the White Earthquake.source
  • 1996Heavy rains kill more than 80 campers near Huesca, Spain.source
  • 1997August 3–11 – Two of the three islands of the Union of the Comoros – Anjouan and Mohéli – attempt to revert to colonial rule by France. The plan fails when the French government of President Jacques Chirac refuses to recolonize them, resulting in the two islands being reintegrated into the Comoros over the next two years.source
  • 19981998 U.S. embassy bombings: the bombings of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, kill 224 people and injure over 4,500; they are linked to terrorist Osama bin Laden, an exile of Saudi Arabia.source
  • 1998Yangtze River Floods: in China the Yangtze river breaks through the main bank; before this, from August 1–5, peripheral levees collapsed consecutively in Jiayu County Baizhou Bay. The death toll exceeds 12,000, with many thousands more injured.source
  • 1999Dagestan incursions: Hundreds of Chechen guerrillas invade the Russian republic of Dagestan, triggering the short war.source
  • 1999A domestic TACV Flight 5002 from São Pedro Airport to Agostinho Neto Airport crashed into a mountain on Santo Antão island, killing the 16 passengers and 2 crew members on board.source
  • 2002The AKS primality test is published by Manindra Agrawal, Neeraj Kayal, and Nitin Saxena from the Indian Institutes of Technology.source
  • 2003Arcen is struck by a heatwave and reached a temperature of 37,8 °C.source
  • 2004August 7–13 – Typhoon Rananim causes widespread destruction as it strikes China.source
  • 2008Georgia intervenes against Russian-backed separatists in its South-Ossetia and Abkhazia regions, causing Russia to invade Georgia and spark the Russo-Georgian war, the first major European land war of the 21st century.source
  • 2009Typhoon Morakot hits Taiwan, killing 673 and stranding more than 1,000 via the worst flooding on the island in half a century.source
  • 2014Khmer Rouge leaders Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan are found guilty of crimes against humanity and are sentenced to life imprisonment by the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.source
  • 2017August 7/8 - Partial Lunar eclipse visible from entire Nepal.source
  • 2018The United States reimposes sanctions on Iran.source
  • 2020Air India Express Flight 1344 crashes after overrunning the runway at Calicut International Airport in Kerala, India, killing 19 of the 191 people on board.source
  • 2022August 5 – August 7 – Israel launches airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, killing Islamic Jihad military leader Tayseer Jabari. Both parties agree to a ceasefire after three days of skirmish.source
  • 2022July 28–August 8 – The 2022 Commonwealth Games is held in Birmingham, England.source
  • 2022July 29 – August 8: Guyana at the 2022 Commonwealth Gamessource
  • 2025OpenAI's model GPT-5 is released.source
  • 2025August 7–17 – The 2025 World Games are held in Chengdu, China.source

Births

  • 317Constantius II, Roman emperor (died 361)source
  • 1282Elizabeth of Rhuddlan, English princess (died 1316)source
  • 1321Bande Nawaz, Indian Sufi scholar and writer (died 1422)source
  • 1533Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, Basque soldier and poet (died 1595)source
  • 1560Elizabeth Báthory, Hungarian noblewoman and purported serial killer (died 1614)source
  • 1574Robert Dudley, styled Earl of Warwick, English explorer and geographer (died 1649)source
  • 1582William Douglas, 7th Earl of Morton, Lord High Treasurer of Scotland (died 1648)source
  • 1598Georg Stiernhielm, Swedish civil servant (died 1672)source
  • 1613William Frederick, Prince of Nassau-Dietz, Dutch stadtholder (died 1664)source
  • 1649Archduke Charles Joseph of Austria, Roman Catholic bishop (died 1664)source
  • 1702Muhammad Shah, Mughal emperor of India (died 1748)source
  • 1726James Bowdoin, American Revolutionary leader, politician (died 1790)source
  • 1735Claudine Picardet, French chemist, mineralogist, meteorologist and scientific translator (died 1820)source
  • 1774William Morgan, resident of Batavia, New York (died 1826)source
  • 1783Princess Amelia of the United Kingdom, member of the British Royal Family (died 1810)source
  • 1876Mata Hari, Dutch exotic dancer, spy (died 1917)source
  • 1881George Enescu, composer (died 1955).source
  • 1928James Randi, Canadian stage magician and scientific skeptic (died 2020)source
  • 1966Jimmy Wales, American-British entrepreneur, co-founder of Wikipediasource
  • 1987Sidney Crosby, Canadian ice hockey playersource

Deaths

  • 362Donatus of Arezzo, Roman Catholic bishop and saintsource
  • 461Majorian, having been beaten and tortured for five days, is beheaded near the Iria River (Lombardy).source
  • 461Majorian, emperor of the Western Roman Empiresource
  • 707Li Chongjun, crown prince of the Tang dynastysource
  • 833Caliph Al-Ma'mun dies after a 20-year reign. He is succeeded two days later by his half-brother al-Mu'tasim, as ruler of the Abbasid Caliphate.source
  • 1028Alfonso V (the Noble), king of León (Spain) (born 994)source
  • 1106Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor (born 1050)source
  • 1121Ulrich I of Passau (or Udalrich), German bishopsource
  • 1234Hugh Foliot, bishop of Hereford (born 1155)source
  • 1248Giordano Forzatè, Italian religious leader (born 1158)source
  • 1296Heinrich II von Rotteneck, prince-bishop of Regensburgsource
  • 1316After an interregnum (sede vacante) of two years, due to disagreements between the cardinals, French cardinal Jacques Duèze, Bishop of Avignon, is elected as successor to Pope Clement V, who died in 1314.source
  • 1385Joan of Kent, Dowager Princess of Wales, widow of Edward the Black Prince (born 1328)source
  • 1461The Ming Dynasty Chinese military general Cao Qin stages a coup against the Tianshun Emperor; after setting fire to the eastern and western gates of the Imperial City, Beijing (which are doused by pouring rains during the day-long uprising), Cao Qin finds himself hemmed in on all sides by imperial forces, loses three of his own brothers in the fight, and instead of facing execution, he flees to his home in the city, and commits suicide by jumping down a well located within his walled compound.source
  • 1485Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany, Scottish prince (born c. 1454)source
  • 1560Anastasia Romanovna, Tsarina of Russia, married to Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible (born 1530)source
  • 1613Thomas Fleming, English judge (born 1544)source
  • 1635Friedrich von Spee, German writer (born 1591)source
  • 1657Robert Blake, British admiral (born 1599)source
  • 1661Benedetta Carlini, Italian mystic (born 1590)source
  • 1661Jin Shengtan, Chinese editor, writer and critic (born 1608)source
  • 1740Jane Brereton, poet, 55source
  • 1821Caroline of Brunswick, Queen of the United Kingdom (born 1768)source
  • 1848Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Swedish chemist (born 1779)source
  • 1855Mariano Arista, President of Mexico (born 1802)source
  • 1927Leonard Wood, American general (born 1860)source
  • 1933Simele massacre: More than 3,000 Assyrian Iraqis are killed by Iraqi government troops.source
  • 1938Konstantin Stanislavsky, Soviet theatre practitioner (born 1863)source
  • 1941Rabindranath Tagore, Indian author, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1861)source
  • 1942Janusz Korczak, Polish educator, author and pediatrician (born 1878)source
  • 1991Former Iranian prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar is assassinated in the Parisian suburb of Suresnes.source