Today:
537 – The siege of Rome by the Ostrogoths, led by King Vitiges, begins against the Byzantine forces commanded by Belisarius.
1556 – Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, a key figure in the English Reformation, is burned at the stake for heresy under Queen Mary I of England.
1788 – A fire destroys much of New Orleans, Louisiana, leaving 856 buildings in ruins.
1804 – The Code Napoléon, the French civil code, is officially adopted as law in France.
1871 – Journalist Henry Morton Stanley begins his expedition to find the missing explorer Dr. David Livingstone in Africa.
1925 – The Butler Act is signed into law in Tennessee, prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools.
1963 – Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, the infamous prison in San Francisco Bay, is officially closed.
1980 – President Jimmy Carter announces the United States will boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow in protest of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
1999 – Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones complete the first non-stop balloon flight around the world, landing in Egypt after traveling for nearly 20 days.
2006 – The social media platform Twitter is founded, marking the start of a new era in online communication.