Today:
1305 – William Wallace, the Scottish resistance leader who fought against English rule, was executed in London. His life later inspired numerous books and films, including Braveheart.
1541 – French explorer Jacques Cartier landed near present-day Quebec City during his third voyage to North America, hoping to establish a permanent French settlement.
1775 – King George III issued the Proclamation of Rebellion, formally declaring that Britain’s American colonies were in open rebellion during the early months of the American Revolution.
1839 – Great Britain captured Hong Kong as a base of operations during the First Opium War with China. British control was later formalized by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842.
1904 – The automobile tire chain was patented by Harry D. Weed of New York. He reportedly got the idea after seeing drivers wrap rope around their tires to improve traction on snowy roads.
1914 – Japan formally declared war on Germany during World War I and soon moved against German-controlled territories in China and the Pacific.
1927 – Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Massachusetts after their controversial murder convictions. Their case became an international cause célèbre amid claims that anti-immigrant and anti-anarchist prejudice had influenced their trial.
1939 – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a nonaggression agreement that secretly divided portions of Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Germany invaded Poland nine days later.
1966 – NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1 transmitted the first photograph of Earth taken from the vicinity of the Moon, showing our planet rising above the lunar horizon.
1990 – East Germany’s parliament voted for the country to join the Federal Republic of Germany on October 3, clearing the way for German reunification after more than four decades of division.