30 BC: Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves a minor victory over Octavian's forces, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to his suicide.
781: The oldest recorded eruption of Mount Fuji (Traditional Japanese date: July 6, 781).
1658: Aurangzeb is proclaimed Mughal emperor of India.
1703: Daniel Defoe is placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel after publishing a politically satirical pamphlet, but is pelted with flowers.
1715: Seven days after a Spanish treasure fleet of 12 ships left Havana, Cuba for Spain, 11 of them sink in a storm off the coast of Florida. A few centuries later, treasure is salvaged from these wrecks.
1777: The U.S. Second Continental Congress passes a resolution that the services of Gilbert du Motier "be accepted, and that, in consideration of his zeal, illustrious family and connexions, he have the rank and commission of major-general of the United States."
1790: The first U.S. patent is issued, to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process.
1856: Christchurch, New Zealand is chartered as a city.
1865: The first narrow-gauge mainline railway in the world opens at Grandchester, Queensland, Australia.
1938: Archaeologists discover engraved gold and silver plates from King Darius the Great in Persepolis.
1941: The Holocaust: Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi official Hermann Göring, orders SS General Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired Final Solution of the Jewish question."
1945: Pierre Laval, the fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied soldiers in Austria.
1948: USS Nevada is sunk by an aerial torpedo after surviving hits from two atomic bombs (as part of post-war tests) and being used for target practice by three other ships.
1964: Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes.
1970: Black Tot Day: The last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy.
1975: The Troubles: three members of a popular cabaret band and two gunmen are killed during a botched paramilitary attack in Northern Ireland.
1987: A tornado occurs in Edmonton, Canada.
1988: Thirty-two people are killed and 1,674 injured when a bridge at the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal collapses in Butterworth, Penang, Malaysia.
1991: The United States and Soviet Union both sign the START I Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the first to reduce (with verification) both countries' stockpiles.
1999: Discovery Program: Lunar Prospector: NASA intentionally crashes the spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon's surface.
2006: Fidel Castro hands over power to his brother, Raúl.
2007: Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and the longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.