Events

• 322 BC - Battle of Crannon between Athens and Macedon following the death of Alexander the Great.
• 1461 - the 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 Forbidden City (which were doused by pouring rains during the day-long uprising), Cao Qin found himself hemmed in on all sides by imperial forces, lost three of his own brothers in the fight, and instead of facing execution he fled to his house and committed suicide by jumping down a well located within the walled compound of his urban Beijing home.
• 1679 - The brigantine Le Griffon, commissioned by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is towed to the south-eastern end of the Niagara River, to become the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes of North America.
• 1714 - The first important victory of the Russian Navy - the Battle of Gangut.
• 1782 - George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.
• 1789 - The United States War Department is established.
• 1794 - Whiskey Rebellion begins: Farmers in the Monongahela Valley of Pennsylvania rebel against the federal tax on liquor and distilled drinks.
• 1819 - Simón Bolívar triumphs over Spain in the Battle of Boyacá.
• 1879 - The opening of the Poor Man's Palace in Manchester.
• 1927 - The Peace Bridge opens, between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York.
• 1933 - The Iraqi Government slaughtered over 3,000 Assyrians in the village of Sumail. The day becomes Assyrian Martyrs Day.
• 1940 - Alsace Lorraine is annexed by the Third Reich (Germany) during World War II
• 1942 - World War II: Battle of Guadalcanal begins - U.S. Marines initiate the first American offensive of the war with landings on Guadalcanal and Tulagi in the Solomon Islands.
• 1944 - IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).
• 1945 - President Harry Truman announces the bombing of Hiroshima with an atomic bomb while returning from the Potsdam Conference aboard the heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31) in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
• 1947 - Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft the Kon-Tiki, smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7000-km (4375-mile) journey across the Pacific Ocean proving that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.
• 1947 - The Bombay Municipal Corporation formally takes over the Bombay Electric Supply and Transport (BEST).
• 1955 - Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, begins selling its first Transistor radios in Japan.
• 1959 - The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny goes into circulation. It replaces the "sheaves of wheat" design and is still in use.
• 1959 - Explorer program: Explorer 6 launched from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
• 1960 - Côte d'Ivoire becomes independent.
• 1964 - Vietnam War: The U.S. Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving US President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on American forces.
• 1966 - Race riots occur in Lansing, Michigan.
• 1967 - Vietnam War: The People's Republic of China agrees to give North Vietnam an undisclosed amount of aid in the form of a grant.
• 1970 - California judge Harold Haley is taken hostage in his courtroom and killed during in an effort to free George Jackson from police custody.
• 1973 - NBC airs the final day of the Watergate hearings on U.S. daytime television.
• 1976 - Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars.
• 1978 - United States President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal.
• 1981 - The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication.
• 1985 - Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to be Japan's first astronauts.
• 1988 - Rioting in New York City's Tompkins Square Park.
• 1989 - U.S. Congressman Mickey Leland (D-TX) and 15 others die in a plane crash in Ethiopia.
• 1999 - A group of Indian army veterans launch the political party Rashtriya Raksha Dal.
• 2000 - The internet art community deviantART launches.
• 2007 - Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants breaks baseball great Hank Aaron's record by hitting his 756th home run.

Births