636 - Death of Saint Isidore of Seville (born 560), Spanish theologian, archbishop and encyclopaedist. His most influential work is Etymologiae, a remarkably comprehensive early encyclopaedia.
1406 - King Robert III of Scotland dies at Rothesay Castle and is succeeded by James I. As James was being held prisoner by the English, the Duke of Albany became regent.
1581 - England's Queen Elizabeth I knights Francis Drake, the first captain to circumnavigate the globe.
1611 - Christian IV of Denmark declares war on Sweden.
1617 - Death of John Napier, Scottish mathematician who invented the concept of logarithms.
1758 - Birth of Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, French painter; after becoming court painter to Napoleon, he produced one of his best known works, Portrait of the Empress Josephine.
1774 - Death of Oliver Goldsmith, Irish playwright, poet and novelist; best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield and the play She Stoops to Conquer.
1853 - The US Senate approved the first foreign port folio investment survey.
1853 -- Samuel Casey started his term as the 8th Treasurer of the United States.
1973 -- The Customs Bureau was redesignated as the United States Customs Service. This change was to take effective on August 1.
1875 - Pierre Monteux, US conductor, is born in France. A noted interpreter of early 20th century music, he conducted the first performances of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe.
1884 - Bolivia cedes Atacama to Chile under the Treaty of Valparaiso.
1887 - Susanna Salter becomes the world's first woman mayor when she is elected in Argonia, Kansas.
1888 - The French establishes the Société Française des Charbonnages du Tonkin and begins coal mining in Vietnam's northeastern region.
1905 - Some 19,000 people die in an earthquake in the province of Lahore, then part of British India. The quake, 8.6 on the Richter scale, demolished the towns of Kangra and Dharmsala.
1925 - French Governor of Indochina Merlin decides to establish the Comiteù Indochinois de Geùodeùsie, Geùophysique et Astronomie.
1947 - The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized technical agency of the United Nations, is created as a permanent body for the purpose of promoting safe and orderly development of civil aviation throughout the world.
1949 - The North Atlantic Treaty setting up a mutual defence alliance is signed in Washington by the foreign ministers of the 12 participating powers.
1959 - Ivory Coast signs series of agreements with Niger, Upper Volta and Dahomey to form Sahel-Benin Union.
1960 - France and the Mali Federation (Senegal and Sudan) sign agreements providing for independence within the French Community.
1968 - Martin Luther King (born 1929), American clergyman and Nobel Prize winner, is assassinated in Memphis by a sniper. He was one of the leaders of the American civil rights movement against racial discrimination.
1969 - Doctors in Houston, Texas, hospital implant first complete artificial heart in a 47-year-old man, who dies four days later.
1975 - Some 155 children die when a US air force transport plane
carrying Vietnamese orphans crashes on take-off in Saøi Goøn.
1975 - Vietnamese Ñaø Laït city of Laâm Ñoàng Central Highlands Province is liberated from the Saøi Goøn regime by liberation forces.
1979 - Pseudo_Intellectual is born.
1983 - Death of Gloria Swanson, US stage and screen actress. Though her film career began in 1913, her most famous role was that of a faded silent movie actress in the 1950 film Sunset
Boulevard.
1983 - tribbel is born.
1990 - Britain publishes a controversial bill to grant citizenship to up to 225,000 Hong Kong residents in the run-up to the colony's handover to China in 1997; on the same day China formally adopts the future constitution of Hong Kong.
1991 - Death of Max Rudolf Frisch (born 1911), Swiss playwright and
novelist, one of the most prominent contemporary German-language writers, dies. His most notable works include Andorra, The Firebugsl, and I'm not Stiller.
1997 - Death of Russian pastoral poet and novelist Vladimir Soloukhin. His works included Country Lanes in Vladimir, Letters from the Russian Museum and Dewdrop.
1997 - Space shuttle Columbia and seven astronauts soar into orbit on a 16-day mission.
1998 - The environment ministers of the world's eight top industrialized nations announce new efforts to curb smuggling of hazardous waste, endangered species and substances that damage the earth's ozone layer.
1999 - NATO warplanes and missiles attack an army headquarters, oil refineries and other targets in Yugoslavia, while Yugoslav forces head for Kosovo Albanian guerrillas making a last stand in the province's western mountains.
Most notable source o' knowledge: VNS.