Yesterday was !
On this day in...
See what historic events that happened for yesterdays date. Click on a year to learn more.
2024
2024 – At the centennial ceremony of the Dominion of Newfoundland National War Memorial, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission allowed an unprecedented second Canadian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The Royal Newfoundland Regiment soldier was entombed in the memorial at this ceremony.
2020
2020 – The United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement replaces NAFTA.
2013
2013 – Croatia becomes the 28th member of the European Union.
2008
2008 – Riots erupt in Mongolia in response to allegations of fraud surrounding the 2008 legislative elections.
2007
2007 – Smoking in England is banned in all public indoor spaces.
2006
2006 – The first operation of Qinghai–Tibet Railway is conducted in China.
2004
2004 – Saturn orbit insertion of Cassini–Huygens begins at 01:12 UTC and ends at 02:48 UTC.
2003
2003 – Over 500,000 people protest against efforts to pass anti-sedition legislation in Hong Kong.
2002
2002 – Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev Tu-154, and DHL Flight 611, a Boeing 757, collide in mid-air over Überlingen, southern Germany, killing all 71 on board both planes.
2002
2002 – The International Criminal Court is established to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression.
1999
1999 – The Scottish Parliament is officially opened by Elizabeth II on the day that legislative powers are officially transferred from the old Scottish Office in London to the new devolved Scottish Executive in Edinburgh. In Wales, the powers of the Welsh Secretary are transferred to the National Assembly.
1997
1997 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Columbia is launched on STS-94, a re-flight of the prematurely-ended STS-83 mission with the same crew.
1997
1997 – China resumes sovereignty over the city-state of Hong Kong, ending 156 years of British colonial rule. The handover ceremony is attended by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Charles, Prince of Wales, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
1991
1991 – The Finnish operator Radiolinja is launched as the world's first GSM network.
1991
1991 – Cold War: The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved at a meeting in Prague.
1990
1990 – German reunification: East Germany accepts the Deutsche Mark as its currency, thus uniting the economies of East and West Germany.
1987
1987 – The American radio station WFAN in New York City is launched as the world's first all-sports radio station.
1984
1984 – The PG-13 rating is introduced by the MPAA.
1983
1983 – The Ministry of State Security is established as China's principal intelligence agency
1983
1983 – A North Korean Ilyushin Il-62M jet en route to Conakry Airport in Guinea crashes into the Fouta Djallon mountains in Guinea-Bissau, killing all 23 people on board.
1980
1980 – "O Canada" officially becomes the national anthem of Canada.
1979
1979 – Sony introduces the Walkman.
1978
1978 – The Northern Territory in Australia is granted self-government.
1976
1976 – Portugal grants autonomy to Madeira.
1972
1972 – The first Gay pride march in England takes place.
1968
1968 – Formal separation of the United Auto Workers from the AFL–CIO in the United States.
1968
1968 – The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is signed in Washington, D.C., London and Moscow by sixty-two countries.
1968
1968 – The United States Central Intelligence Agency's Phoenix Program is officially established.
1967
1967 – Merger Treaty: The European Community is formally created out of a merger between the Common Market, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Atomic Energy Commission.
1966
1966 – The People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (The known as the 2nd Artillery Corps) is founded.
1966
1966 – The first color television transmission in Canada takes place from Toronto.
1963
1963 – The British Government admits that former diplomat Kim Philby had worked as a Soviet agent.
1963
1963 – ZIP codes are introduced for United States mail.
1962
1962 – Independence of Rwanda and Burundi.
1960
1960 – Ghana becomes a republic and Kwame Nkrumah becomes its first President as Queen Elizabeth II ceases to be its head of state.
1960
1960 – The Trust Territory of Somaliland (the former Italian Somaliland) gains its independence from Italy. Concurrently, it unites as scheduled with the five-day-old State of Somaliland (the former British Somaliland) to form the Somali Republic.
1959
1959 – Specific values for the international yard, avoirdupois pound and derived units (e.g. inch, mile and ounce) are adopted after agreement between the US, the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries.
1958
1958 – Flooding of Canada's Saint Lawrence Seaway begins.
1958
1958 – The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation links television broadcasting across Canada via microwave.
1957
1957 – The International Geophysical Year begins.
1949
1949 – The merger of two princely states of India, Cochin and Travancore, into the state of Thiru-Kochi (later re-organized as Kerala) in the Indian Union ends more than 1,000 years of princely rule by the Cochin royal family.
1948
1948 – Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Quaid-i-Azam) inaugurates Pakistan's central bank, the State Bank of Pakistan.
1947
1947 – The Philippine Air Force is established.
1946
1946 – Crossroads Able is the first postwar nuclear weapon test.
1943
1943 – The City of Tokyo and the Prefecture of Tokyo are both replaced by the Tokyo Metropolis.
1942
1942 – The Australian Federal Government becomes the sole collector of income tax in Australia as State Income Tax is abolished.
1942
1942 – World War II: First Battle of El Alamein.
1935
1935 – Regina, Saskatchewan, police and Royal Canadian Mounted Police ambush strikers participating in the On-to-Ottawa Trek.
1932
1932 – Australia's national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, was formed.
1931
1931 – Wiley Post and Harold Gatty become the first people to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engined monoplane aircraft.
1931
1931 – United Airlines begins service (as Boeing Air Transport).
1924
1924 – The National War Memorial for the Dominion of Newfoundland was inaugurated by Field Marshall Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig in St. John's, Newfoundland. The date commemorates the first day of the Battle of the Somme, where at Beaumont-Hamel, 86 percent of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment was wiped out.
1923
1923 – The Parliament of Canada suspends all Chinese immigration.
1922
1922 – The Great Railroad Strike of 1922 begins in the United States.
1921
1921 – The Chinese Communist Party is founded by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, with the help of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), who seized power in Russia after the 1917 October Revolution, and the Far Eastern Secretariat of the Communist International.
1917
1917 – Chinese General Zhang Xun seizes control of Beijing and restores the monarchy, installing Puyi, last emperor of the Qing dynasty, to the throne. The restoration is reversed just shy of two weeks later, when Republican troops regain control of the capital.
1917
1917 – World War I: Russia launches an offensive against Austria-Hungary to capture Galicia, its final offensive of the war.
1916
1916 – World War I: First day on the Somme: On the first day of the Battle of the Somme 19,000 soldiers of the British Army are killed and 40,000 wounded.
1915
1915 – Leutnant Kurt Wintgens of the then-named German Deutsches Heer's Fliegertruppe army air service achieves the first known aerial victory with a synchronized machine-gun armed fighter plane, the Fokker M.5K/MG Eindecker.
1911
1911 – Germany dispatches the gunboat SMS Panther to Morocco, sparking the Agadir Crisis.
1908
1908 – SOS is adopted as the international distress signal.
1903
1903 – Start of first Tour de France bicycle race.
1901
1901 – French government enacts its anti-clerical legislation Law of Association prohibiting the formation of new monastic orders without governmental approval.
1898
1898 – Spanish–American War: The Battle of San Juan Hill is fought in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba.
1890
1890 – Canada and Bermuda are linked by telegraph cable.
1885
1885 – The Congo Free State is established by King Leopold II of Belgium.
1885
1885 – The United States terminates reciprocity and fishery agreement with Canada.
1881
1881 – General Order 70, the culmination of the Cardwell and Childers reforms of the British Army, comes into effect.
1881
1881 – The world's first international telephone call is made between St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, and Calais, Maine, United States.
1879
1879 – Charles Taze Russell publishes the first edition of the religious magazine The Watchtower.
1878
1878 – Canada joins the Universal Postal Union.
1874
1874 – The Sholes and Glidden typewriter, the first commercially successful typewriter, goes on sale.
1873
1873 – Prince Edward Island joins into Canadian Confederation.
1870
1870 – The United States Department of Justice formally comes into existence.
1867
1867 – The British North America Act takes effect as the Province of Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia join into confederation to create the modern nation of Canada. John A. Macdonald is sworn in as the first Prime Minister of Canada. This date is commemorated annually in Canada as Canada Day, a national holiday.
1863
1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Gettysburg begins.
1863
1863 – Slavery was abolished in the Dutch colony of Surinam, a date now celebrated as Ketikoti in independent Suriname.
1862
1862 – American Civil War: The Battle of Malvern Hill takes place. It is the last of the Seven Days Battles, part of George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign.
1862
1862 – Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, second daughter of Queen Victoria, marries Prince Louis of Hesse, the future Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse.
1862
1862 – The Russian State Library is founded as the Library of the Moscow Public Museum.
1858
1858 – Joint reading of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace's papers on evolution to the Linnean Society of London.
1855
1855 – Signing of the Quinault Treaty: The Quinault and the Quileute cede their land to the United States.
1841
1841 – Thomas Lempriere and James Clark Ross carve a marker on the Isle of the Dead in Van Diemen's Land to measure tidal variations, one of the earliest surviving benchmarks for sea level rise.
1837
1837 – A system of civil registration of births, marriages and deaths is established in England and Wales.
1823
1823 – The five Central American nations of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica declare independence from the First Mexican Empire after being annexed the year prior.
1819
1819 – Johann Georg Tralles discovers the Great Comet of 1819, (C/1819 N1). It is the first comet analyzed using polarimetry, by François Arago.
1782
1782 – Raid on Lunenburg: American privateers attack the British settlement of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.
1770
1770 – Lexell's Comet is seen closer to the Earth than any other comet in recorded history, approaching to a distance of 0.0146 astronomical units (2,180,000 km; 1,360,000 mi).
1766
1766 – François-Jean de la Barre, a young French nobleman, is tortured and beheaded before his body is burnt on a pyre along with a copy of Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique nailed to his torso for the crime of not saluting a Roman Catholic religious procession in Abbeville, France.
1690
1690 – Glorious Revolution: Battle of the Boyne in Ireland (as reckoned under the Julian calendar).
1690
1690 – War of the Grand Alliance: Marshal de Luxembourg triumphs over an Anglo-Dutch army at the battle of Fleurus.
1643
1643 – First meeting of the Westminster Assembly, a council of theologians ("divines") and members of the Parliament of England appointed to restructure the Church of England, at Westminster Abbey in London.
1569
1569 – Union of Lublin: The Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania confirm a real union; the united country is called the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth or the Republic of Both Nations.
1523
1523 – Jan van Essen and Hendrik Vos become the first Lutheran martyrs, burned at the stake by Roman Catholic authorities in Brussels.
1520
1520 – Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés fight their way out of Tenochtitlan after nightfall.
1431
1431 – The Battle of La Higueruela takes place in Granada, leading to a modest advance of the Kingdom of Castile during the Reconquista.
1097
1097 – Battle of Dorylaeum: Crusaders led by prince Bohemond of Taranto defeat a Seljuk army led by sultan Kilij Arslan I.
552
552 – Battle of Taginae: Byzantine forces under Narses defeat the Ostrogoths in Italy, and the Ostrogoth king, Totila, is mortally wounded.
69 �
69 – Tiberius Julius Alexander orders his Roman legions in Alexandria to swear allegiance to Vespasian as Emperor.