• 363 - Roman Emperor Julian defeats the Sassanid army in the Battle of Ctesiphon, under the walls of the Sassanid capital, but is unable to take the city.
• 1167 - Battle of Monte Porzio - A Roman army supporting Pope Alexander III is defeated by Christian of Buch and Rainald of Dassel
• 1176 - Battle of Legnano, in which the Lombard League defeats Emperor Frederick I.
• 1414 - Council of Constance.
• 1453 - Byzantine-Ottoman Wars: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih capture Constantinople after a siege, ending the Byzantine Empire.
• 1592 - At the Battle of Sacheon, the Korean navy led by Admiral Yi Sun Shin, repel a Japanese army which outnumbers them nearly 3 to 1.
• 1660 - English Restoration: Charles II (on his birthday - see below) is restored to the throne of Great Britain.
• 1677 - Treaty of Middle Plantation establishes peace between the Virginia colonists and the local Indians.
• 1727 - Peter II becomes Tsar of Russia.
• 1733 - Right of Canadians to keep Indian slaves upheld at Quebec City.
• 1765 - Patrick Henry in a speech (on his birthday, see below) denouncing the Stamp Act is believed to have said, "If this be treason, make the most of it!"
• 1780 - Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton brutally massacred Colonel Abraham Buford's continentals even after the continentals surrendered. 113 Americans were killed.
• 1790 - Rhode Island becomes the last of the original United States colonies to ratify the Constitution and is admitted as the 13th U.S. state.
• 1848 - Wisconsin is admitted as the 30th U.S. state.
• 1864 - Emperor Maximilian of Mexico arrives in Mexico for the first time.
• 1867 - Austro-Hungarian agreement called Ausgleich ("the Compromise") is born through Act 12, which established the Austro-Hungarian Empire; on June 8 Emperor Franz Joseph was crowned King of Hungary.
• 1868 - The assassination of Michael Obrenovich III, Prince of Serbia, in Belgrade.
• 1886 - Chemist John Pemberton places his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, the ad appearing in the Atlanta Journal.
• 1903 - May coup d'etat: Alexander Obrenovich, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, are assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand (Crna Ruka) organization.
• 1913 - Igor Stravinsky's ballet score The Rite of Spring is premiered in Paris.
• 1914 - Ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland sinks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence; 1,024 lives lost.
• 1919 - Einstein's theory of general relativity is tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington's observation of a total solar eclipse in Principe and by Andrew Crommelin in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil.
• 1919 - Republic of Prekmurje founded
• 1924 - AEK Athens FC is established on the anniversary of the siege of Constantinople by the Turks.
• 1932 - World War I Veterans begin to assemble in Washington, DC in the Bonus Army to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945.
• 1942 - Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and the John Scott Trotter Orchestra record Irving Berlin's "White Christmas", the best-selling Christmas album in history, for Decca Records in Los Angeles.
• 1950 - St. Roch, first ship to circumnavigate North America, arrives in Halifax, Nova Scotia .
• 1953 - Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay are the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay's (adopted) 39th birthday.
• 1954 - First of the annual Bilderberg conferences.
• 1964 - The Arab League meets in East Jerusalem to discuss the Palestinian situation in Israel which leads to the formation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
• 1968 - Manchester United wins the European Cup, the first English Club to do so.
• 1972 - 26 people are killed and dozens more injured when three Japanese gunmen opened fire on crowds at Lod International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel.
• 1973 - Tom Bradley is elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles, California.
• 1982 - Pope John Paul II becomes the first pontiff ever to visit Canterbury Cathedral.
• 1985 - Heysel Stadium disaster: In Brussels, Belgium, 39 football fans die and hundreds are injured by Liverpool fans at a European Cup match.
• 1985 - Amputee Steve Fonyo completes cross-Canada marathon at Victoria, British Columbia, after 14 months.
• 1988 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union as he arrives in Moscow for a superpower summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
• 1990 - Boris Yeltsin is elected president of the Russian SFSR by the Russian parliament.
• 1999 - Olusegun Obasanjo takes office as President of Nigeria, the first elected and civilian head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule.
• 1999 - Space Shuttle Discovery completes the first docking with the International Space Station.
• 2001 - U.S. Supreme Court rules that disabled golfer Casey Martin could use a cart to ride in tournaments.
• 2004 - The World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
• 2004 - The Al-Khobar massacres in Saudi Arabia kill 22.
• 2005 - France, one of the founders of a united Europe, resoundingly rejects the European Constitution.

Births