1770 British explorer Captain James Cook first sights Australia. Writes in his log book that “what we have as yet seen of this land appears rather low, and not very hilly, the face of the Country green and Woody, but the Sea shore is all a white Sand.”

1916 Alderman Kelly reads the 'Castle Order' to a meeting of Dublin Corporation; this forged document supposedly from Dublin Castle, indicated that there was to be mass arrests of Irish Volunteers to prevent "trouble"

1932 Bonnie Parker is captured in a failed hardware store burglary, and subsequently jailed; a grand jury fails to indict her, however, and she is released a few months later.

1943 Jews refuse to surrender the Warsaw Ghetto to SS officer Jürgen Stroop, who then orders its destruction, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

1945 US aircraft carrier Franklin heavy damaged in Japanese air raid.

1951 General Douglas MacArthur ends his military career.

1967 The Beatles sign a contract agreeing to stay together for 10 years (they don't)

1969 Serious rioting in the Bogside area of Derry following clashes between Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association marchers and Loyalists and members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

1989 Gun turret explodes on USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors.

1818 Napoleon Bonaparte bids emotional farewell to his old guard at Palace of Fontainebleau.

1899 David Beatty is appointed executive officer of the HMS Barfleur, a small battleship and flagship of the China Station.

1918 Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims marking his final victories before his death the following day.

1934 Heinrich Himmler appointed chief of all German police including the Prussian secret state police.

1945 Soviet artillery begins shelling Berlin.

1951 Huge ticker-tape parade held in NYC for World War II and Korean War General Douglas MacArthur after he was relieved of Command by President Truman.

1968 British politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech.

1982 The Provisional Irish Republican Army explode bombs in Belfast, Derry, Armagh, Ballymena, Bessbrook and Magherafelt; 2 civilians are killed and 12 injured.

1993 Uranus passes Neptune (once every 171 years)

1916 The Aud, carrying a cargo of 20,000 rifles to assist Irish republicans in staging what would become the 1916 Rising, is captured by the British Navy and forced to sail towards Cork Harbour.

1916 Ulster Protestant and Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement lands at Tralee Bay, Ireland from a German submarine; discovered at McKenna's Fort and arrested by the Royal Irish Constabulary.

1918 German World War I fighter ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen aka "The Red Baron", is shot down and killed over Vaux sur Somme in France. Canadian pilot Arthur Roy Brown is credited with the kill.

1945 Allied troops occupy German nuclear laboratory in Haigerloch.

1945 Soviet army arrives at outskirts of Berlin, Germany.

1967 Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Allilueva arrives in New York City after defecting to the US

1989 Thousands of Chinese crowd into Beijing's Tiananmen Square cheering students demanding greater political freedom.

1721 HMS Seahorse infected with smallpox arrives in Boston harbor, causing the first outbreak in two decades. - half of the population catch it, causing 850 deaths.

1915 First military use of poison gas occurs when Germany uses chlorine gas against the Allies at Ypres in World War I

1916 Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers Eóin MacNeill issues the Countermanding order in Dublin to try to stop what would become the Easter Rising.

1940 Rear Admiral Joseph Taussig testifies before US Senate Naval Affairs Committee that war with Japan is inevitable.

1945 Battle of Berlin: Upon being informed that a planned counter-attack never happened, Adolf Hitler flies into a rage, denounces the German Army and concedes World War II is lost.

1945 SS chief Heinrich Himmler secretly meets with Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, asking him to act as an intermediary for a surrender offer to the Western Allies. The Allies do not take the offer seriously.

2016 Paris Agreement on climate change signed in New York binding 195 nations to an increase in the global average temperature to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C

1867 Queen Victoria and Napoleon III turn down plans for a channel tunnel.

1918 Raid of Zeebrugge; the British navy attempts to block German vessels from leaving port by sinking obsolete ships - mostly fails.

1941 Greek Army surrenders to Germany; British RAF evacuates the Greek King George II to Egypt.

1184 BC The Greeks enter Troy using the Trojan Horse (traditional date)

1914 A shipment of 35,000 rifles and 5 million rounds of ammunition are landed at Larne for the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF, an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland.

1916 Easter Rising of Irish republicans against British occupation begins in Dublin.

1953 Winston Churchill knighted by Queen Elizabeth II

1961 JFK accepts "sole responsibility" following Bay of Pigs.

1962 1st Lockheed A-12 is taxi tested.

1967 American General William Westmoreland says in a Vietnam War news conference that the enemy has "gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily"

1969 Paul McCartney says there is no truth to rumours he is dead.

1993 The IRA explodes a 1000kg car bomb in Bishopsgate, London, killing a news photographer and injuring 44 others.

1792 Guillotine first used in France, executes highwayman Nicolas Pelletier.

1915 First landings at Gaba Tepe and Cape Helles on the Gallipoli Peninsula by ANZAC forces during World War I

1941 Operation Mercury: Adolf Hitler orders the conquest of the island of Crete, the first mainly airborne invasion in military history.

1945 Soviet forces complete their encirclement of Berlin, cutting off all access points west of the German capital.

1915 Italy secretly signs the "Treaty of London" with Britain, France and Russia, bringing Italy into World War I on the Allied side.

1944 1st B-29 attacked by Japanese fighters, one fighter shot down.

1945 Marshal Philippe Pétain, leader of France's Vichy collaborationist regime during World War II, arrested for treason.

1945 Battle of Bautzen - last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht.

1982 Argentina surrenders to Great Britain on South Georgia Island, near the Falkland Islands.

1986 World's worst nuclear disaster: The fourth reactor at Chernobyl nuclear power station in the Soviet Union explodes, 31 die and radioactive contamination reaches much of Western Europe.

1865 Steamboat "SS Sultana" explodes in the Mississippi River, killing up to 1,800 of the 2,427 passengers in the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. Most were paroled Union POWs on their way home.

1916 The British renew their assault on the Irish Volunteer position in Mount Street; shelling also sets the buildings on fire.

1933 Adolf Hitler authorizes creation of Ministry of Aviation, in part to revive the German Luftwaffe, under Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering.

1940 Himmler orders establishment of Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

1943 Witold Pilecki escapes from Auschwitz after having voluntarily been imprisoned there to gain information about the Holocaust.

1945 Italian partisans capture Benito Mussolini at Dongo (Lake Como)

1946 1st radar installed aboard a commercial ship.

1982 Trial of John Hinckley begins for the attempted assassination of US President Ronald Reagan.

2005 The superjumbo jet aircraft Airbus A380 makes its first flight from Toulouse, France.

1770 British Captain James Cook, aboard HMS Endeavour, first lands in Australia at Botany Bay.

1789 Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny on HMS Bounty against its captain William Bligh in the South Pacific.

1939 Adolf Hitler claims German-Polish non-attack treaty still in effect.

1940 SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) Rudolf Höss (not Hess, different Nazi) becomes commandant of concentration camp Auschwitz.

1942 Nightly "dim-out" begins along US East Coast.

1944 Exercise "Tiger" ends with 750 US soldiers dead in D-Day rehearsal after their convoy ships were attacked by German torpedo boats off Slapton Sands, Devon.

1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower resigns as Supreme Commander of NATO

1969 Charles de Gaulle resigns as president of France.

1916 Irish republicans abandon the post office in Dublin and surrender unconditionally, marking the end of the Easter Rising.

1940 Norwegian King Haakon & government flee to Britain.

1945 Conscientious objector Desmond Doss saves 75 wounded soldiers in the Battle of Okinawa at Hacksaw Ridge. Later depicted in the Oscar-winning film "Hacksaw Ridge".

1945 US Army liberates 31,601 people from the Dachau Nazi concentration camp in Germany.

1946 28 former Japanese leaders indicted in Tokyo as war criminals.

1975 Vietnam War: US begins to evacuate its citizens from Saigon in Operation Frequent Wind in response to advancing North Vietnamese forces, bringing an end to US involvement in the war.

1990 Wrecking cranes begin tearing down the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate.

1997 Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 comes into force; agreement outlaws production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons among its signatories.

1789 George Washington is inaugurated as the first President of the United States of America at Federal Hall in NYC

1916 Germany ratifies bill bringing in Daylight Saving Time - first country in the world.

1920 The British Government ends military conscription.

1940 Air New Zealand then known as TEAL makes its inaugural flight with a flight from Auckland to Sydney. Later becomes 1st airline in the world to boil hot water in-flight to offer customers hot tea and coffee.

1942 1st submarine built on Great Lakes launched, (Peto), Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

1943 Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp for Jews forms.

1945 Adolf Hitler commits suicide along with his new wife Eva Braun in the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin as the Red Army captures the city.

1945 Lord Haw-Haw (William Joyce) calls for crusade against the Bolsheviks.

1945 Record 48 U-boats sunk by the Allies this month.

1945 Red Army opens attack on German Reichstag building in Berlin.

1707 Acts of Union comes into force, uniting England and Scotland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

1840 "Penny Black", the world's first adhesive postage stamp issued by Great Britain.

1915 British liner Lusitania leaves NY for Liverpool on its last fateful journey.

1919 British naval officer David Beatty is promoted to Admiral of the Fleet.

1923 Adolf Hitler and Ernst Rohm attempt to break up socialist May Day demonstrations, inviting Nazis from as far away as Nuremberg to take part in the violence.

1924 German automobile manufacturers Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft and Benz & Cie begin their first joint venture (later merge into Mercedes-Benz)

1931 Empire State Building opens in New York City - world's tallest building until the World Trade Center in 1970

1943 German plane sinks the British ship SS Erinpura in the Mediterranean with the loss of 799 lives.

1944 Messerschmitt Me 262 Sturmvogel, 1st jet bomber, makes 1st flight.

1945 About 1,000 citizens of Demmin in Germany, commit suicide provoked by occupation by Soviet Red Army.

1945 Admiral Karl Doenitz forms German government.

1946 Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery appointed British supreme commander.

1960 Russia shoots down Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane over Sverdlovsk.

1933 In Germany, Adolf Hitler bans trade unions.

1945 Battle of Berlin ends as the Soviet army storms the capital, forcing German commander of the city general Helmuth Weidling to surrender.

1945 More than 1,000,000 German soldiers officially surrender to the Western Allies in Italy and Austria.

1982 Falklands War: Argentine cruiser General Belgrano is sunk by British submarine HMS Conqueror, killing more than 350 men.

2011 Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI's most wanted man is killed by US special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

1915 Canadian poet and physician John McCrae writes the poem "In Flanders Fields" at Ypres on the Western Front.

1916 Irish Nationalists Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh and Thomas Clarke are executed by firing squad following their involvement in the Easter Rising.

1921 Northern Ireland is created under the UK Government of Ireland Act partitioning off six north eastern counties with a Protestant majority.

1945 German ocean liner SS Cap Arcona, laden with prisoners is sunk by the Royal Air Force in the western Baltic Sea, killing 5,800. One of the largest maritime losses of life in World War II.

1947 Japan's post-war constitution goes into effect, granting universal suffrage, stripping Emperor Hirohito of all but symbolic power and outlawing Japan's right to make war.

2001 The United States loses its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947.