986 - A Byzantine army is destroyed in the pass of Trajan's Gate by the Bulgarians under the command of Comitopuli Samuel and Aron. The Byzantine emperor Basil II, narrowly escapes capture.
1657 - Robert Blake, one of the most important military commanders of the Commonwealth of England and one of the most famous English admirals of the 17th century, passes away.
1786 - American frontiersman and soldier, Davy Crockett is born.
1807 - Robert Fulton's first American steamboat leaves New York City for Albany, New York on the Hudson River. This is the inauguration of the first commercial steamboat service in the world.
1862 - Major General J.E.B. Stuart is assigned command of all the cavalry of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.
1863 - In Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, Union batteries, gunboats, and other vessels bombard the Confederate held Fort Sumter.
1864 - Confederate forces defeat Union troops near Gainesville, Florida during the American Civil War.
1907 - Pike Place Market, the longest continuously running public farmers market in the United States, opens in Seattle, Washington.
1914 - The son and fifth child of FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. is born.
1929 - Francis Gary Powers is born. He was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission over Soviet Union airspace.
1940 - Billy Fiske dies. He was the 1932 Olympic champion bobsled driver, and one of the first American pilots killed in action during World War II.
1942 - U.S. Marines raid the Japanese-held Pacific island of Makin. The atoll is referred to Butaritari today.
1943 - The U.S. Eighth Air Force suffers the loss of nearly 60 bombers on the Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission.
1943 - The U.S. Seventh Army under General George S. Patton arrives in Messina, Italy. It is followed several hours later by the British 8th Army under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, thus completing the Allied conquest of Sicily.
1945 - The celebration and proclamation of Indonesia's independence from the Empire of Japan.
1962 - East German border guards kill 18-year-old Peter Fechter as he attempts to cross the Berlin Wall into West Berlin. He becomes one of the first victims of the wall.
1966 - Rodney Mullen, a professional freestyle and street skateboarder, considered the inventor of the ollie, kickflip, heelflip, impossible, and a long list of others, is born.
1969 - Category 5 Hurricane Camille hits the Mississippi Delta, killing 248 people and causing $1.5 billion in damages.
1970 - Venera 7 is launched. It will later become the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet (Venus).
1978 - Double Eagle II becomes the first balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean. It lands in Miserey, France, approximately 137 hours after leaving Presque Isle, Maine.
1982 - The first Compact Discs (CD's) are released to the public in Germany.
1998 - President Bill Clinton admits in taped testimony that he had an "improper physical relationship" with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On the same day, he admits before the nation, that he misled people about the relationship.
1999 - An extremely disastrous earthquake strikes Izmit, Turkey, killing more than 17,000 and injuring another 44,000.
2008 - American swimmer, Michael Phelps becomes the first person to win eight gold medals in one Olympic Games, with the win in the 4 x 100 m medley relay.
Rudolf Hess - In 1987, dies while imprisoned at Spandau Prison in West Berlin at the age of 93. He was found in a summer house in a garden with electrical cord wrapped around his neck, and his death was ruled a suicide. Hess was a prominent Nazi politician who was Adolf Hitler's deputy in the Nazi Party, and on the eve of war with the USSR, he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the United Kingdom. He was arrested, became a prisoner of war, was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Nuremberg trials.
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