- 1264 – King Henry III was captured in the Battle of Lewes, making Simon de Montfort the de facto ruler of England.
- 1607 – An expedition led by Christopher Newport established the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in North America.
- 1796 – Edward Jenner began testing cowpox as a vaccine for protection against smallpox.
- 1948 – Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion publicly read the Declaration of Independence in Tel Aviv.
- 1973 – The NASA space station Skylab (pictured) was launched from Cape Canaveral.