* 1600 - The Linköping Bloodbath takes place on Maundy Thursday in Linköping, Sweden.
* 1602 - The Dutch East India Company is established.
* 1616 - Sir Walter Raleigh is freed from the Tower of London after 13 years imprisonment.
* 1739 - Nadir Shah occupies Delhi in India and sacks the city, stealing the jewels of the Peacock Throne.
* 1760 - The "Great Fire" of Boston destroys 349 buildings.
* 1815 - Napoleon enters Paris after escaping from Elba with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule.
* 1848 - Revolutions of 1848 in the German states: King Ludwig I of Bavaria abdicates.
* 1852 - Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is published.
* 1856 - Costa Rican troops rout Walker's soldiers.
* 1861 - An earthquake completely destroys Mendoza, a city in western Argentina.
* 1883 - Signature of Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.
* 1899 - At Sing Sing prison, Martha M. Place is sentenced to become the first woman executed in an electric chair.
* 1913 - Sung Chiao-jen, a founder of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), is wounded in an assassination attempt and dies 2 days later.
* 1914 - In New Haven, Connecticut, the first international figure skating championship takes place.
* 1916 - Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity.
* 1922 - The USS Langley is commissioned as the first United States Navy aircraft carrier.
* 1933 - Giuseppe Zangara is executed in Florida's electric chair for fatally shooting Anton Cermak in an assassination attempt against Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
* 1934 - 1934 Great Hakodate fire, 4,170 square kilometers has lost, caused fire. Japanese authority estimated 2,165 killed, injured 9,485, 145,500 homeless. The great urban fire has worst disaster, except air bomb, earthquake fire in Japanese history.
* 1942 - In Zgierz, Poland, 100 Poles are taken from a labor camp and shot by the Germans.
* 1942 - Holocaust: in Rohatyn, western Ukraine, German SS murder 3,000 Jews, including 600 children, annihilating 70% of Rohatyn's Jewish ghetto.
* 1942 - World War II: General Douglas MacArthur, at Terowie, South Australia, makes his famous speech regarding the fall of the Philippines, in which he says: "I came out of Bataan and I shall return".
* 1948 - With a Musicians Union ban lifted, the first telecasts of classical music in the United States, under Eugene Ormandy and Arturo Toscanini, are given on CBS and NBC.
* 1951 - Fujiyoshida, a city located in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan, in the center of the Japanese main island of Honshū is founded.
* 1952 - The United States Senate ratifies a peace treaty with Japan.
* 1956 - Tunisia gains independence from France.
* 1964 - The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO (European Space Research Organization) is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962.
* 1969 - John Lennon & Yoko Ono marry in Gibraltar
* 1974 - A failed kidnap attempt is made on Her Royal Highness Princess Anne and her husband Captain Mark Phillips in The Mall, outside Buckingham Palace, London.
* 1980 - The Radio Caroline ship, Mi Amigo founders in a gale off the English coast.
* 1985 - Libby Riddles becomes the first woman to win the 1,135-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
* 1986 - Jacques Chirac becomes Prime Minister of France.
* 1987 - The Food and Drug Administration approves anti-AIDS drug AZT.
* 1988 - Eritrean War of Independence: Having defeated the Nadew Command, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front enters the town of Afabet, victoriously concluding the Battle of Afabet.
* 1990 - Ferdinand Marcos's widow, Imelda Marcos, goes on trial for bribery, embezzlement, and racketeering.
* 1993 - A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb explodes in Warrington, northwest England, killing two children.
* 1995 - A sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway kills 12 and wounds 1,300 persons.
* 1999 - Legoland California opens in Carlsbad, California.
* 2000 - Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, a former Black Panther once known as H. Rap Brown, is captured after a gun battle that leaves a Georgia sheriff's deputy dead.
* 2003 - 2003 invasion of Iraq: In the early hours of the morning, the United States and three other countries begin military operations in Iraq.
* 2004 - Stephen Harper wins the leadership of the newly created Conservative Party of Canada, thus becoming the first leader in the party's history.
* 2005 - A magnitude 6.6 earthquake hits Fukuoka, Japan, its first major quake in over 100 years. One person is killed, hundreds are injured and evacuated.
* 2006 - Cyclone Larry makes landfall in eastern Australia, destroying most of the country's banana crop.
* 2006 - Over 150 Chadian soldiers are killed in eastern Chad by members of the rebel UFDC. The rebel movement sought to overthrow Chadian president Idriss Deby.
