1265: At the Battle of Evesham, the army of Prince Edward (the future Edward I of England) defeats the forces of rebellious barons led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester; killing de Montfort and many of his allies. (This is sometimes considered the end of the age of chivalry in England.)
1693: Dom Perignon invents Champagne.
1704: During the War of the Spanish Succession, Gibralter is captured by the Engish.
1789: In France members of the National Constituent Assembly take an oath to end feudalism and abandon their privileges.
1790: A newly passed tariff act creates the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard).
1792: Percy Bysshe Shelley is born.
1821: Atkinson & Alexander publish the Saturday Evening Post for the first time as a weekly newspaper.1892: The family of Lizzie Borden is murdered in the Fall River, Massachusetts home.
1902: Louis Armstrong is born.
1902: The Greenwich foot tunnel under the River Thames opens.
1912: Raul Wallenberg is born. He was a Swedish diplomat who used his diplomatic immunity to smuggle Jews out of Nazi-controlled Europe during WWII. He wound up getting murdered by the Soviets in Lubyanka Prison in 1947.
1914: Germany invades Belgium; in response, the United Kingdom declares war on Germany and World War I really gets rolling.1942: Don S. Davis is born. He played Scully's Dad on The X-Files.
1944: A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse where they find Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family.1961: Lauren Tom is born. She's, like, a real actor (she was in The Joy Luck Club) but I know her best as Minh Souphanousinphone on King of the Hill.
1969: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, U.S. representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy begin secret peace negotiations. The negotiations will eventually fail.
1977: President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.
Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.
