Official 40th Anniversary Star Trek logo. Copyright 2007 Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios Inc.

• 1565 – First permanent European settlement in N. America – present-day St. Augustine, FL – was established by the Spanish
• 1941 – A 900-day siege of Leningrad by German forces began (WWII)
• 1966 – The TV series “Star Trek” premiered on NBC
• 1974 – U.S. President Ford pardoned former President Nixon
• 1986 – Nissan opened its first European factory
• 2010 – BP released its investigative report on the Deepwater Horizon disaster

Elizabeth I , "Darnley Portrait", c. 1575

• 1533 – England’s Queen Elizabeth I was born in Greenwich
• 1776 – World’s first submarine attack took place in New York Harbor
• 1822 – Brazil declared its independence from Portugal
• 1986 – Bishop Desmond Tutu becomes the archbishop of Cape Town, S. Africa
• 1996 – Rapper Tupac Shakur was shot
• 2008 – Troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed in government conservatorship
• 2010 – France held general strike over retirement reforms

King Richard I of England

• 1189 – England’s King Richard I (the Lion-Hearted) was crowned in Westminster
• 1783 – The Treaty of Paris officially ended America’s Revolutionary War
• 1939 – Britain and France declared war on Germany
• 1943 – Allies invaded Italian mainland
• 1978 – Pope Benedict XV named to papacy
• 1990 – Bush prepared for his first summit with Gorbachev
• 2010 – A suicide bomber claimed 44 victims in two Pakistan blasts

Detail of painting from 1666 of the Great Fire of London by an unknown painte

• 32 B.C. – Battle of Actium – Roman leader Octavian wins against the forces of Roman Mark Antony and Cleopatra
• 1666 – The Great Fire of London broke out
• 1789 – The U.S. Treasury Department was established by Congress
• 1935 – A hurricane slammed into the Florida Keys, claiming 423 lives
• 1945 – Japan surrendered (WWII)
• 1969 – First ATM opened for business
• 2010 – Mideast peace talks begin in Washington

Hurricane Earl

• 1775 – King George refused Olive Branch Petition
• 1905 – Alberta and Saskatchewan became the eighth and ninth provinces of Canada
• 1939 – Germany invaded Poland
• 1969 – Quaddafi leads coup in Libya
• 1983 – Korean Airlines flight shot down by the Soviet Union
• 2004 – Chechen separatists storm Russian school
• 2010 – U.S. officials order mandatory evacuations as Earl approaches

Princess Diana on a royal visit for the official opening of the community centre on Whitehall Road, Bristol in May 1987

• 1888 – Mary Ann Nichols, regarded as the first victim of Jack the Ripper, found dead
• 1897 – Edison patented the Kinetograph
• 1935 – FDR signs the Neutrality Act
• 1939 – Germany prepares for the invasion of Poland
• 1955 – William Cobb demonstrated the first solar-powered car
• 1997 – Princes Diana died in a car crash
• 2006 – Iran defied a U.N. deadline to stop enriching uranium
• 2010 – Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki marks the end to Iraq combat mission by U.S.

Mt. Sinabung erupting in Jakarta, Indonesia

• 30 B.C. – Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, took her life following the defeat of her forces against Octavian
• 1797 – “Frankenstein” author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in London
• 1862 – Battle of Richmond, KY
• 1918 – Vladimir I. Lenin was shot
• 1966 – China agrees to provide aid to North Vietnam
• 1983 – Guion S. Bluford Jr. became the first African-American astronaut to travel in space
• 2010 – Mount Sinabung in Jakarta, Indonesia erupted, killing 2 and displacing more than 30,000

A map of Krakatoa after the 1883 eruption, showing the change in geography

• 1770 – German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart
• 1883 – The most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history occurs on Krakatau in Indonesia
• 1916 – Romania enters WWI
• 1945 – American troops began landing in Japan following the surrender of the Japanese government in WWII
• 2008 – Sen. Barack Obama of IL was nominated for president by the DNC in Denver
• 2010 – Former President Jimmy Carter won the release of a U.S. citizen imprisoned in North Korea

Vesuvius from Portici by Joseph Wright of Derby

• 79 – Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic ash
• 1572 – The slaughter of French Protestants at the hands of Catholics began in Paris
• 1814 – British forces invaded Washington, D.C., setting fire to the Capitol and the White House
• 1932 – Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly nonstop across the U.S.
• 2006 – Astronomers declared that Pluto was no longer a planet, demoting it to a “dwarf planet”
• 2010 – Danielle becomes a Category 2 hurricane in the Atlantic

• 1754 – France’s King Louis XVI was born at Versailles
• 1775 – Britain’s King George III proclaimed the American colonies in a state of open rebellion
• 1926 – Silent film star Rudolph Valentino died at age 31
• 1939 – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression treaty
• 1970 – Lou Reed plays his last show with the Velvet Underground
• 1999 – NYC reported first cases of West Nile Virus
• 2010 – Police ended the hostage crisis on a tour bus in Manila, Philippines