1429 The siege of Orleans, France, is broken by Joan of Arc, boosting French morale and paving the way for victory in the Hundred Years War with England.
1652 The ships Walvis and Oliphant, which were too heavily loaded to sail from the Netherlands with Jan van Riebeeck’s other three ships, arrive in Table Bay.
1765 The HMS Victory, the world’s oldest naval ship still in commission, is launched.
1867 Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel – in whose memory the awards that bear his name would be given out each year – patents dynamite in England, the first of three patents he would receive for the explosive material.
1915 The liner RMS Lusitania is torpedoed, turning public sentiment against Germany and heralding the US entry into World War I.
1934 The world’s largest pearl (6.4 kg) is found at Palawan, Philippines
1942 The Battle of Coral Sea ends, stopping Japanese expansion. It is Japan’s first defeat World War II. The battle marked the first time that two forces fought only using aircraft without the ships ever sighting each other.
1945 World War II: Unconditional German surrender to the Allies signed by General Alfred Jodl at Rheims, France.
1952 The concept of the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey Dummer.
1954 The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ends in an embarrassing French defeat in Vietnam.
1986 Canadian Patrick Morrow becomes the first person to conquer the Seven Summits (the highest peak on each continent).
1994 Expressionist Edvard Munch’s iconic painting, The Scream, is recovered undamaged after being stolen earlier in the year.
1999 Three Chinese are killed, and 20 are injured, when a Nato plane accidentally bombs China’s Belgrade, Yugoslavia, embassy.
2004 American businessman Nick Berg is beheaded by Islamic militants. The act is filmed and released on the Internet.
2007 Israeli archaeologists find the tomb of Herod the Great.
2012 A Nato air strike kills 14 people and wounds 6 civilians in Afghanistan's Badghis Province.
2012 Paeleoclimatological researchers reckon dinosaur flatulence may have warmed the earth.
2013 55 people are killed by a Boko Haram attack in Nigeria.
2014 Fighting between pro-Russian and Kiev forces continue amid fears internationally of a civil war in Ukraine.
2015 Underwater explorers discover a silver ingot from pirate Captain William Kidd’s fabled treasure near Madagascar.
2019 Hackers seize control of the computer system of the US city of Baltimore, demanding a ransom in Bitcoins to unlock them.
2021 Hugo Ernesto Osorio Chávez (“The Psychopath of Chalchuapa”) is arrested in Chalchuapa, El Salvador, after the graves of 40 people is found on his property.
2022 Afghan women are told by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to cover up in public, or their male guardian will face criminal punishment.
2023 Syria is readmitted into the influential Arab League, 10 years after being thrown out for repressing pro-democracy protesters.
2023 Man rams car into group of migrants waiting at a bus stop in Brownsville, Texas, killing eight people and injuring at least 10.
