1519

Hernán Cortés entered Tenochtitlán after an invitation from Aztec ruler Moctezuma. Shortly after the welcoming festivities, conflict broke out, eventually causing Moctezuma to be stoned to death and Cortés and his company to be chased out of the city.

1644

After the collapse of the Ming dynasty, Shunzhi Emperor was enthroned in Beijing as the first Qing emperor to rule over China.

1889

Montana was admitted as the 41st U.S. state.

1895

Wilhelm Röntgen discovered the X-ray while experimenting with electricity.

1950

The first jet aircraft-to-jet aircraft dogfight occurred during the Korean War when two North Korean MiG-15s fighters were shot down by a United States F-80 Shooting Star.

1957

Pan Am Flight 7 went missing between San Francisco and Honolulu. A wreckage and bodies were discovered about a week later.

1965

The overseas territory of the United Kingdom the British Indian Ocean Territory is founded, consisting of Chagos Archipelago, Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches islands.

1966

Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke became the first African American elected to the United States Senate.

1972

HBO launches its first programming with the broadcasting of the 1971 film Sometimes a Great Notion.

1999

The world’s first “Internet murder” is committed when Sharee Miller convinced her online lover Jerry Cassaday to kill her husband Bruce at his junkyard near Flint, Michigan.

2002

The United Nation Security Council Resolution 1441 is unanimously approved, forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face “serious consequences.”

2011

The potentially hazardous asteroid 2005 YU55 passed 0.85 lunar distances (approximately 324,600 kilometres or 201,700 miles) from earth, the closest known approach by an asteroid of is brightness since the asteroid 2010 XC15 in 1976.

2013

One of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, Typhoon Haiyan, struck the Visayas region of the Philippines.