1184 BCE Troy is sacked and burned.
1509 Henry VIII of England marries Catherine of Aragon, the first of his six wives.
1770 British explorer Captain James Cook discovers Australia’s Great Barrier Reef by running aground on it.
1903 A group of Serbian officers storms the royal palace and assassinates King Alexander I of Serbia and his wife, Queen Draga.
1937 The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin executes eight army leaders as part of the Great Purge.
1955 Eighty-three spectators are killed and 100 are injured after an Austin-Healey and a Mercedes-Benz collide at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the deadliest accident in motorsport.
1963 US president John F Kennedy says segregation is morally wrong and that it is ‘time to act’.
1963 Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức immolates himself in Saigon, creating one of the Vietnam War’s most iconic images.
1964 Queen Elizabeth orders the Beatles to her birthday party; they attend.
1976 Anti-apartheid advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza is arrested in South Africa.
1982 ET the Extra-Terrestrial, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring a young Drew Barrymore, is released.
1987 Diane Abbott, Paul Boateng and Bernie Grant are elected as the first black MPs in Great Britain.
1993 Jurassic Park, also directed by Steven Spielberg, opens.
2007 Mudslides in Chittagong, Bangladesh, kill 130 people.
2009 A Texas mother is hit by lightning while in her kitchen. Witnesses say the lightning came through a light fixture, struck her chest and exited her foot. She survived, but spent three days in hospital.
2010 The first African Fifa World Cup kicks off with hosts South Africa playing to a 1-1 draw against Mexico at Soccer City in Johannesburg.
2014 South African businessman Benjamin Mophatlane dies.
2018 US president Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea hold the first meeting between leaders of their two countries, in Singapore. - The Historian
The Independent on Saturday