1865 – Maastricht-Venlo railway opens in Netherlands
1919 – 1st Dutch radio program: Soirée Musicale with “Turf in you(r) ransel” is broadcast
1932 – German election – KPD defeats NSDAP
1940 – Franklin D. Roosevelt re-elected US President
1981 – Larry Holmes TKOs Renaldo Snipes in 11 for heavyweight boxing title
1986 – President Reagan signs landmark immigration reform bill
1993 – Actor Howard Rollins arrested for drunk driving
1993 – Evander Holyfield beats Riddick Bowe in 12 for heavyweight boxing title
2006 – 40th Country Music Association Awards: Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood and Keith Urban win
2013 – 15 people are killed after a suicide bombing in Baghdad, Iraq
Category: Historical Events
Historical Events for 2nd November 2024
1907 – Ottawa Mint Proclamation is published
1917 – In WWI the 1st US soldiers are killed in combat: James Gresham, Thomas Enright and Merle Hay
1944 – Canadian troops occupy Knokke in Belgium
1959 – Charles Van Doren confesses during a congressional investigation that TV quiz show “Twenty-One” was fixed
1976 – Democrat candidate Jimmy Carter is elected President of the United States, defeating incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford; Walter Mondale elected vice president
1990 – First regular season game played outside North America by any major professional sports league the NBA’s Phoenix Suns beat the Utah Jazz, 119-96 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium in Japan
1993 – Christie Todd Whitman (R) elected 1st woman governor of New Jersey
1996 – Miami Heat’s Pat Riley becomes eighth coach to win 800 games in 97-95 win at Indiana; milestone accomplished 2 weeks shy of his 15th coaching anniversary, faster than any coach in NBA history
2017 – On This Day and Xiaomi launch a content partnership to display today in history content in Xiaomi’s calendar app to users in India
2021 – Jihadist gunman ambush and kill 69 people, including a local mayor in south-west Niger, adding to the 530 killed in 2021 to date
Historical Events for 18th October 2024
1572 – Spanish troops attack Maastricht
1805 – 45 women meet at Mrs Silas Lee’s home in Wiscasset, Maine, organizes Female Charitable Society, one of the earliest women’s clubs in America
1967 – Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to German-American nuclear physicist Hans Bethe
1978 – NY Islanders 1st scoreless tie, vs LA Kings
1980 – Bernard Slade’s stage comedy “Romantic Comedy”, closes at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, NYC, after for 396 performances
1984 – USSR performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan
1999 – MLB American League Championship: New York Yankees beat Boston Red Sox, 4 games to 1
2009 – British Mercedes driver Jenson Button finishes 5th in Brazilian Grand Prix at Autódromo José Carlos Pace to clinch his first F1 World Drivers Championship
2017 – 19th Chinese Communist Party congress opens in Beijing with President Xi Jinping delivering 3hr 23min speech heralding “new era”
2019 – The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, the World Economic Forum, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-host “Event 201”, a table-top panel exercise on dealing with aa fictional high-level pandemic exercise in New York City
Historical Events for 10th October 2024
1631 – Saxon army occupies Prague
1854 – US Assay Office in NYC, New York opens
1916 – In Game 3, Charlie Ebbets becomes the 1st owner to raise the price of World Series grandstand seats to $5-up from $3
1947 – Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s musical “Allegro” opens at Majestic Theater, NYC; runs for 318 performances
1971 – 5th Country Music Association Awards: Charlie Pride wins
1979 – Panama assumes sovereignty over Canal Area (ie Canal Zone)
1985 – US fighter jets force Egyptian plane carrying hijackers of Italian ship Achille Lauro to land in Italy, gunmen are placed in custody
1994 – Value of Russian ruble decreases, 3081 rubles per dollar
2021 – Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen says country won’t bow to Chinese pressure in defiant speech on Taiwanese National Day, day after Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed to “fulfil reunification”
2023 – Revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s musical “Merrily We Roll Along”, based on George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s play, starring Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe, opens at Hudson Theater, NYC; wins 4 Tony Awards
Historical Events for 4th October 2024
1636 – Battle at Wittstock, Brandenburg: Sweden beat Ferdinand III
1824 – Mexico becomes a republic
1921 – League of Nations refuses to assist starving Russians
1959 – Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 premieres at the Large Hall of the Leningrad Conservatory with the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra
1964 – LPGA Championship Women’s Golf, Stardust CC; Mary Mills shoots final round 69 to win first of her 2 LPGA C’ships, 2 strokes ahead of defending champion Mickey Wright
1971 – USSR performs underground nuclear test
2001 – Siberia Airlines Flight 1812: a Sibir Airlines Tupolev TU-154 crashes into the Black Sea after being struck by an errant Ukrainian S-200 missile. 78 people are killed.
2004 – SpaceShipOne wins Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight
2009 – Senior Players Championship Men’s Golf, Baltimore CC: Jay Haas wins his third and final Champions Tour major title by 1 stroke from Tom Watson
2017 – Chinese pianist Lang Lang plays Carneige Hall one-handed due to injury with 14 year-old Maxim Lando playing his left hand for Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”
Historical Events for 16th September 2024
1873 – German troops leave France
1915 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia adjourns 4th Duma
1922 – US National Championship Men’s Tennis, Germantown CC, Philadelphia: Bill Tilden wins third straight US singles title; beats fellow American Bill Johnston 4-6, 3-6, 6-2, 6-3, 6-4
1950 – Viet Minh offensive against French bases in Vietnam
1964 – “Shindig” premieres on ABC-TV
1974 – US General Alexander Haig, Jr. becomes NATO supreme commander in Europe
1977 – 90 minute pilot of “Logan’s Run” premieres on TV
1984 – 1st broadcast of “Miami Vice” on NBC-TV
1996 – 1st one-day international in Canada, India v Pakistan at Toronto
2012 – Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, seeks a court order to resolve a week long teachers strike
Historical Events for 9th September 2024
1583 – Sinking of the English ship Squirrel off the Azores with explorer and founder of Newfoundland, Humphrey Gilbert, on board
1767 – Colegio de San Ignacio de Loyola Vizcaínas – the oldest continuously operating educational institution in Mexico, opens for the education of girls and women in Mexico City
1914 – First fully mechanized unit in the British Army created – the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade (WWI)
1915 – Association for the Study of Negro Life and History formed in Chicago by Carter G. Woodson and others. Now the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
1932 – Steamboat SS Observation explodes in NYC East River with 71 killed
1972 – Connection found between Mammoth Cave Ridge and Flint cave systems in Kentucky, joining 144 miles of passages – making it the world’s longest known cave system (later mapped at 420 miles)
1978 – 3rd game of Boston Massacre; NY Yankees beat Red Sox, 7-0
1983 – Challenger returns to Kennedy Space Center via Sheppard AFB, Texas
2000 – US Open Women’s Tennis: Venus Williams wins her first US title; beats fellow American Lindsay Davenport 6-4, 7-5
2013 – 44 people are killed and 45 are injured after a bus crashes into a ravine in Northern Guatemala
Historical Events for 1st September 2024
1869 – Construction begins on the Grand Central Depot for Cornelius Vanderbilt’s New York and Harlem Railroad (later replaced by Grand Central Station, and then by Grand Central Terminal)
1874 – Sydney General Post Office opens in Australia
1939 – In the “scoop of the century,” Telegraph journalist Clare Hollingworth becomes the first to report the outbreak of World War II
1945 – Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Vince DiMaggio smashes his 4th grand slam of season, tying NL record, in an 8-3 win v Boston Braves
1953 – WTCN (now KARE) TV channel 11 in Minneapolis-St Paul, MN (MET) begins
1953 – Fokker begins building F-27 Fokker Friendship
1976 – The Meadowlands Race Track opens in East Rutherford, New Jersey
1997 – Jerry Lewis’ 32nd Muscular Dystrophy telethon raises $50,500,000
2012 – Two suicide bombings kill 12 people and wound 50 in a NATO base in Afghanistan’s Sayed Abad district
2019 – German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier asks for Polish forgiveness for WWII at 80 year commemoration in Pilsudski Square, Warsaw
Historical Events for 30th August 2024
1590 – Tokugawa Ieyasu enters Edo Castle (Traditional Japanese date: August 1, 1590)
1799 – Batavian fleet surrenders to British navy during Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland
1890 – President Benjamin Harrison signed the first U.S. law requiring inspection of meat products
1906 – NY Highlander Joe Doyle debuts pitching back-to-back shut-outs
1932 – Hermann Goering elected President of the German Reichstag
1933 – Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar forms secret police (PIDE)
1951 – US and Philippines sign mutual defense pact
1986 – 43rd Venice Film Festival: “Le rayon vert” directed by Eric Rohmer wins Golden Lion
2012 – A blast in the Xiaojiawan coal mine, China, kills 26 miners with 21 missing
2013 – 15 people are killed by a liquid ammonia leak at a cold storage plant in Shanghai, China
Historical Events for 28th August 2024
1830 – 1st American built locomotive, “Tom Thumb” races a horse-drawn car from Stockton and Stokes stagecoach company from Baltimore to Ellicott Mills. Let history record that due to mechanical problems the horse won!
1937 – Toyota Motors becomes an independent company
1964 – Race riot in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania sparked by police reaction to domestic dispute fueled traffic tie-up; riot and looting continues for 3 days, with 2 killed, hundreds injured and $4M of damage in the city’s North Philadelphia neighborhood
1970 – “I’ll Be There” single by The Jackson 5 is released (Billboard Song of the Year 1970)
1972 – American 4 x 100m freestyle relay team of David Edgar, John Murphy, John Heidenreich and Mark Spitz swim a world record 3:26.42 to beat Soviet Union for the gold medal at the Munich Olympics
1986 – Bolivia president Victor Paz Estensoro calls state of siege
1991 – Lexington Ave IRT subway train derails at Union Square, 5 die
1994 – Canadian Open Women’s Golf (du Maurier Classic), Ottawa Hunt GC: Martha Nause wins by 1 from Michelle Mcgann
1997 – Belgian amusement park riders were stuck upside down for 90 minutes
2004 – Led by San Antonio Spurs shooting guard Manu Ginóbili Argentina beats Italy 84-69 for the Olympic basketball gold medal in Athens; star-studded US team takes bronze