Today:
338 BC: The Battle of Chaeronea takes place, where a Macedonian army led by Philip II defeats combined forces of Athens and Thebes, securing Macedonian hegemony in Greece.
216 BC: During the Second Punic War, the Carthaginian army led by Hannibal defeats a numerically superior Roman army at the Battle of Cannae.
1776: Most of the 55 members of the Continental Congress sign the parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia.
1870: The Tower Subway, the world’s first underground tube railway, opens in London, England.
1876: “Wild Bill” Hickok, a famous gunfighter of the American West, is murdered in Deadwood, South Dakota.
1923: President Warren G. Harding dies suddenly in a hotel in San Francisco while on a Western speaking tour; Vice President Calvin Coolidge succeeds him.
1934: With the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg, Chancellor Adolf Hitler becomes absolute dictator of Germany under the title of Fuhrer.
1939: Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard write a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon.
1943: During World War II, a Japanese destroyer rams and sinks American PT boat No. 109, with Lieutenant John F. Kennedy (future U.S. president) and most of his crew surviving.
1990: The Iraqi army invades Kuwait, leading to the Gulf War.