988 – The city of Dublin was founded on the banks of the river Liffey in Ireland.
1040 - Lady Godiva stripped and rode round the streets of Coventry in her birthday suit, to protest the heavy taxation imposed by her husband, Lord Leofric, the Earl of Mercia.
1212 – The most severe of several early fires of London burnt most of the city to the ground.
1460 – Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick defeated the king's Lancastrian forces and took King Henry VI prisoner in the Battle of Northampton.
1553 – Lady Jane Grey took the throne of England for - nine days. Awww bless.
1778 – Louis XVI of France declared war on the Kingdom of Great Britain.
1856 – Nikola Tesla was born.
1913 – Temperatures in Death Valley, California hit 134 °F (~56.7 °C), which is the highest temperature recorded in the United States.
1938 – Howard Hughes set a new record by completing a 91 hour airplane flight around the world.
1940 - The German air force, the Luftwaffe, attacked shipping convoys off the south-east coast of England launching the Battle of Britain.
1962 – Telstar, the world's first communications satellite, was launched into orbit.
1964 - The Beatles returned from their US tour to Liverpool, just in time for the premiere of their film A Hard Day's Night.
1973 - The Bahamas became an independent nation.
1985 – Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk in Auckland, New Zealand Harbor by French DGSE agents.
1991 – The South African cricket team was readmitted into the International Cricket Council (ICC) following the end of Apartheid.
1996: The bodies of Lin Russell and her six-year-old daughter Megan were found half a mile from their home in Kent. Nine-year-old Josie Russell - also found at the scene - recovered from serious head injuries. In October 1997 a man was arrested for the murders.
1997 – Scientists in London reported their DNA analysis findings from a Neandertal skeleton which supported the out of Africa theory of human evolution placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
2000 – A leaking southern Nigerian petroleum pipeline exploded, killing about 250 people.