1988: A fire at Illinois Bell's Hinsdale Central Office triggers an extended 1AESS network outage once considered the "worst telecommunications disaster in US telephone industry history".
1984: Corporal Denis Lortie enters the Quebec National Assembly and opens fire, killing three people and wounding 13. René Jalbert, Sergeant-at-Arms of the assembly, succeeds in calming him, for which he will later receive the Cross of Valour.
1972: Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces his order to place mines in major North Vietnamese ports in order to stem the flow of weapons and other goods to that nation.
1963: South Vietnamese soldiers under the Roman Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem open fire on Buddhists defying a ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag on Vesak, killing nine and sparking the Buddhist crisis.
1945: The Halifax riot starts when thousands of civilians and servicemen rampage through Halifax.
1945: End of the Prague uprising, celebrated now as a national holiday in the Czech Republic.
1945: World War II: V-E Day, combat ends in Europe. German forces agree in Reims, France, to an unconditional surrender.
1945: Hundreds of Algerian civilians are killed by French Army soldiers in the Sétif massacre.
1942: World War II: Gunners of the Ceylon Garrison Artillery on Horsburgh Island in the Cocos Islands rebel in the Cocos Islands Mutiny. Their mutiny is crushed and three of them are executed, the only British Commonwealth soldiers to be executed for mutiny during the Second World War.
1942: World War II: The Battle of the Coral Sea comes to an end with Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier aircraft attacking and sinking the United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Lexington. The battle marks the first time in the naval history that two enemy fleets fight without visual contact between warring ships.
1941: The German Luftwaffe launches a bombing raid on Nottingham and Derby
1933: Mohandas Gandhi begins a 21-day fast of self-purification and launched a one-year campaign to help the Harijan movement.
1927: Attempting to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York, French war heroes Charles Nungesser and François Coli disappear after taking off aboard The White Bird biplane.
1902: In Martinique, Mount Pelée erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing over 30,000 people. Only a handful of residents survive the blast.
1794: Branded a traitor during the Reign of Terror by revolutionists, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was also a tax collector with the Ferme générale, is tried, convicted and guillotined in one day in Paris.
1788: The French Parlement is suspended to be replaced by the creation of forty-seven new courts.
1516: Trần Cảo Rebellion: A group of imperial guards, led by Trịnh Duy Sản, murdered Emperor Lê Tương Dực and fled, leaving the capital Thăng Long undefended.
1450: Jack Cade's Rebellion: Kentishmen revolt against King Henry VI.
453 BC: Spring and Autumn period: The house of Zhao defeats the house of Zhi, ending the Battle of Jinyang, a military conflict between the elite families of the State of Jin.