1305

Scottish patriot William Wallace is hanged, drawn, beheaded, and quartered in London. 

1754

Louis XVI, King of France during the French Revolution, is born. Louis XVI is the king who met his fate at the guillotine.

1900

Booker T. Washington forms the National Negro Business League in Boston, Massachusetts, which would later go on to be renamed the National Business League in 1966.

1914

Battle of Mons begins. In their first confrontation on European soil since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, four divisions of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), commanded by Sir John French, struggle with the German 1st Army over the 60-foot-wide Mons Canal in Belgium, near the French frontier.

1939

Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact, stunning the world, given their diametrically opposed ideologies. But the dictators were, despite appearances, both playing to their own political needs.

1942

German forces begin an assault on the major Soviet industrial city of Stalingrad. The Battle of Stalingrad will go on to become the bloodiest battle in human history.

1989

Pete Rose gets banned from baseball, as punishment for betting on baseball; Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose accepts a settlement that includes a lifetime ban from the game.

1990 

Armenia Declares Independence From the Soviet Union. The Western Asian country had been part of the USSR since 1922. The country declared itself independent of the USSR on the 23rd of August, 1990, and finally achieved independence a year later on September 21, 1991.