1775: The midnight ride of Paul Revere.
Paul Revere, a renowned silversmith, is better remembered as a folk hero of the American Revolution who this night in 1775 made a dramatic ride on horseback to warn Boston-area residents of an imminent British attack.
| 2002: | | After 29 years in exile, the former king of Afghanistan, Mohammad Zahir Shah, returned to the capital city of Kabul in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of the country and toppling of the Taliban government. |
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| 1980: | | | Zimbabwe achieved its independence from the United Kingdom. |
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| 1945: | | During the U.S. invasion of the Japanese island of Okinawa in World War II, American war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed on nearby Ie Island by Japanese gunfire. |
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| 1906: | | | San Francisco was rocked by an earthquake caused by slippage along the San Andreas Fault. |
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| 1857: | | | American defense lawyer, public speaker, debater, and writer Clarence Darrow—among whose high-profile court appearances was the Scopes Trial, in which he defended a Tennessee high-school teacher who had broken a state law by presenting the Darwinian theory of evolution—was born. |
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| 1506: | | Pope Julius II laid the first stone of the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. |
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