Today:
1346 – Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor was elected King of the Romans, strengthening the Luxembourg dynasty’s influence in Europe.
1533 – Pope Clement VII excommunicated Henry VIII after the English king rejected papal authority over his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
1804 – Alexander Hamilton was mortally wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr in Weehawken, New Jersey. Hamilton died the following day.
1893 – Kokichi Mikimoto successfully cultured the world’s first pearl, revolutionizing the pearl industry.
1914 – Babe Ruth’s Professional Baseball Debut: Babe Ruth made his professional baseball debut with the Baltimore Orioles of the International League.
1921 – Mongolian Revolution of 1921 resulted in the establishment of a people’s government in Mongolia.
1960 – Harper Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and become an American literary classic.
1979 – Skylab, America’s first space station, re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, with debris falling over the Indian Ocean and parts of Western Australia.
1995 – More than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed after the fall of Srebrenica in the Srebrenica Massacre, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
2021 – Richard Branson flew to the edge of space aboard Virgin Galactic‘s VSS Unity, becoming the first company founder to reach space aboard his own spacecraft.