1512 - Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sighted Florida. 
1513 - Spaniard Juan Ponce de Leon discovers Florida
1599 - Robert Devereux becomes lt-general of Ireland
1625 - Charles I, King Of England, Scotland & Ireland, ascends English throne upon the death of James the First. 
1668 - English king Charles II gives Bombay to East India Company
1790 - The shoelace invented
1794 - President Washington and Congress authorized creation of the US Navy. 
1802 - Treaty of Amiens -- French Revolution ends
1808 - Joseph Haydn's oratorio "The Seasons," premieres in Vienna
1814 - Battle at Horseshoe Bend: Gen Andrew Jackson beats Creek Indians
1836 - Mexicans execute 417 Texas revolutionaries at Goliad. [H]
1836 - The first Mormon temple was dedicated, in Kirtland, Ohio. 
1841 - 1st US steam fire engine tested, NYC
1849 - Joseph Couch patents steam-powered percussion rock drill
1855 - Abraham Gesner patents kerosene
1860 - M L Byrn patents "covered gimlet screw with a 'T' handle" (corkscrew)
1861 - Black demonstrators in Charleston staged ride-ins on street cars
1863 - President Davis calls for this to be a day of fasting & prayer
1865 - Siege of Spanish Fort, AL-captured by Federals
1866 - Andrew Rankin patents the urinal
1884 - 1st long-distance telephone call, Boston-NY
1912 - 1st Japanese cherry blossom trees planted in Wash DC. First Lady Helen Herron Taft and the Viscountess Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador. [H]
1914 - 1st successful blood transfusion (in Brussels)
1917 - The Seattle Metropolitans became the first US team to win the Stanley Cup as they defeated the Montreal Canadiens. 
1930 - 1st US radio broadcast from a ship at sea
1931 - Charlie Chaplin receives France's distinguished Legion of Honor
1931 - John McGraw says night baseball will not catch on
1933 - Japan leaves League of Nations
1933 - Polythene discovered by Reginald Gibson & Eric William Fawcett
1940 - Himmler orders building of Auschwitz concentration camp
1941 - Britain leases defense bases in Trinidad to US for 99 years
1941 - Hitler signs Directive 27 (assault on Yugoslavia)
1942 - Allies raid German submarine base in St Nazaire
1943 - US begins assault on Fondouk-pass, Tunisia
1944 - 1,000 Jews leave Drancy France for Auschwitz Concentration Camp
1944 - 2,000 Jews are murdered in Kaunas Lithuania
1944 - 40 Jewish policemen in Riga Latvia ghetto are shot by the gestapo
1944 - Children's Aktion-Nazis collect all the Jewish children of Lovno
1945 - Ella Fitzgerald & Delta Rhythm Boys record "It's Only a Paper Moon"
1945 - General Dwight D. Eisenhower told reporters in Paris that German defenses on the Western Front had been broken. 
1945 - Iwo Jima occupied, after 22,000 Japanese & 6,000 US killed
1945 - US 20th Army corps captures Wiesbaden
1952 - Failed assassination attempt of German Chancellor Adenauer
1955 - Steve McQueen makes his network TV debut (Goodyear Playhouse)
1956 - French commandos land in Algeria
1956 - US seizes US communist newspaper "Daily Worker"
1957 - 29th Academy Awards - "Around World in 80 Days," Bergman, Brynner win
1958 - CBS Labs announce new stereophonic records
1958 - Havana Hilton opens
1958 - Nikita Khrushchev became Soviet premier in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party. 
1964 - Great Train Robbers sentenced to a total of 307 years behind bars
1964 - Strongest earthquake in American history, measuring 8.4 on the Richter scale, rocks southern Alaska, killing 125 and injuring thousands.
1966 - Anti-Vietnam war demonstrations in US, Europe & Australia
1968 - Suharto succeeds Sukarno as president of Indonesia
1968 - Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit the earth, died in a plane crash. 
1973 - 45th Academy Awards - "Godfather," Marlon Brando & Liza Minnelli win Marlon Brando turns down Oscar for best actor in support of Indians
1976 - Washington DC underground Metro opens
1977 - 582 people were killed when a KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off, crashed into a Pan Am 747 on the Canary Island of Tenerife. 
1978 - Bob Fosse's "Dancin'" opens at Broadhurst Theater NYC for 1,774 performances
1979 - Supreme Court rules, 8-1, cops can't randomly stop cars
1980 - Mount St Helens becomes active after 123 years
1980 - 137 workers died when a North Sea floating oil field platform, the Alexander I. Keilland, capsized during a storm.
1982 - "Best Little Whorehouse..." closes at 46th St NYC after 1577 performances
1983 - Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs," premieres in NYC
1984 - Andrew Lloyd Webber/Richard Stilgoe's "Starlight Express," premieres
1990 - Soviet soldiers dragged Lithuanian army deserters from a hospital in Vilnius and took over the headquarters of Lithuania's independent Communist Party in an effort to reassert Moscow's control over the dissident Baltic republic.
1991 - In a surprising flap, President Bush publicly disagreed with General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who claimed he had urged further fighting in the Persian Gulf War at the time Bush ordered a cease-fire. (Schwarzkopf later apologized to Bush.) 
1991 - NCAA bans U of Minn football team from postseason play in 1992
1992 - Democratic presidential front-runner Bill Clinton, campaigning in New York, apologized for recently golfing at an all-white club. 
1992 - German Chancellor Helmut Kohl met with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim in Munich, a meeting denounced by Jewish groups because of Waldheim's alleged involvement with Nazi persecution during World War II.
1992 - An appeals court in West Palm Beach, Fla., refused to declare dead a baby girl born without a brain, despite her parents' anguished plea to allow her vital organs to be donated to help save other infants.
1994 - Church in Piedmont Alabama collapses in tornado, 19 killed
1995 - "Forrest Gump" won six Academy Awards, including best picture and best actor for Tom Hanks.
1996 - An Israeli court convicted Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's confessed assassin of murder, then sentenced former law student Yigal Amir to life in prison. 
1997 - Dexter King, son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., met with James Earl Ray, the man in prison for the older King's assassination. Ray denied having anything to do with the shooting, to which King replied, "I believe you." 
1997 - Russian workers staged a nationwide strike to demand overdue wages.
1998 - Russia got a new premier when President Boris Yeltsin nominated Sergei Kiriyenko, 35, to replace fired Premier Viktor Chernomyrdin.
1998 - The Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Viagra, made by Pfizer, saying it helped about two-thirds of impotent men improve their sexual function. 
2000 - The Supreme Court decided the federal government could deny food stamps and other welfare benefits to people who live permanently in the United States but who are not citizens. 
2000 - DaimlerChrysler AG announced it would buy 34 percent of Japan's Mitsubishi Motors Corporation.
2001 - An empty train riding on the wrong side of the tracks crashed into a crowded commuter train in central Belgium, killing eight people.
2001 - California regulators approved electricity rate hikes of up to 46 percent. 
2001 - In its first specific accusation against a detained U.S.-based scholar, China said Gao Zhan had confessed to spying for foreign intelligence agencies. (Gao, who had been detained on Feb. 11, was released the following July.)