1683: William Penn signed a friendship treaty with Lenni Lenape Indians in Pennsylvania.
1700: Russia gave up its Black Sea fleet as part of a truce with the Ottoman Empire.
1758: British and Hanoverian armies defeated the French at Krefeld in Germany.
1760: The Austrians defeated the Prussians at Landshut, Germany.
1757: Robert Clive defeated the Indians at Plassey and won control of Bengal.
1836: The U.S. Congress approved the Deposit Act, which contained a provision for turning over surplus federal revenue to the states.
1848: A bloody insurrection of workers in Paris erupted.
1860: The U.S. Secret Service was created to arrest counterfeiters.
1865: Confederate General Stand Watie, who was also a Cherokee chief, surrendered the last sizable Confederate army at Fort Towson, in the Oklahoma Territory.
1868: Christopher Latham Sholes received a patent for an invention that he called a "Type-Writer."
1884: A Chinese Army defeated the French at Bacle, Indochina.
1902: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy renewed the Triple Alliance for a 12 year duration.
1904: The first American motorboat race got underway on the Hudson River in New York.
1926: The first lip reading tournament in America was held in Philadelphia, PA.
1931: Wiley Post and Harold Gatty took off from New York on the first round-the-world flight in a single-engine plane.
1934: Italy gained the right to colonize Albania after defeating the country.
1938: The Civil Aeronautics Authority was established.
1938: Marineland opened near St. Augustine, Florida.
1947: The U.S. Senate joined the House in overriding President Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act.
1951: Soviet U.N. delegate Jacob Malik proposed cease-fire discussions in the Korean War.
1952: The U.S. Air Force bombed power plants on Yalu River, Korea.
1956: Gamal Abdel Nasser was elected president of Egypt.
1964: Henry Cabot Lodge resigned as the U.S. envoy to Vietnam and was succeeded by Maxwell Taylor.
1964: The burned car of three civil rights workers was found prompting the FBI to begin a search. The men had been missing since June 21, 1964. Their bodies were found on August 4, 1964.
1966: Civil Rights marchers in Mississippi were dispersed by tear gas.
1972: U.S. President Nixon and White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman discussed a plan to use the CIA to obstruct the FBI's Watergate investigation.
1985: All 329 people aboard an Air-India Boeing 747 were killed when the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Ireland. The cause was thought to be a bomb.
1989: The movie "Batman" was released nationwide.
1992: John Gotti was sentenced in New York to life in prison after being convicted of racketeering charges.
1993: Lorena Bobbitt of Prince William County, VA, sexually mutilated her husband, John, after he allegedly raped her.
1997: Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, died in New York of burns suffered in a fire set by her 12-year old grandson. She was 61.
2003: Apple Computer Inc. unveiled the new Power Mac desktop computer.
2004: The U.S. proposed that North Korea agree to a series of nuclear disarmament measures over a three-month period in exchange for economic benefits.
2005: Roger Ebert received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.