1597: 1st Dutch East India Company ships return from the Far East

1619: 1st known African Americans in English North America (approx. 20) land at Point Comfort (Fort Monroe), Virginia. They are then sold or traded into servitude.

1741: Alaska first sighted by Danish explorer Vitus Bering at head of Russian expedition

1866: President Andrew Johnson formally declares US Civil War over

1905: Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen forms the first chapter of T’ung Meng Hui, a union of all secret societies determined to bringing down the Manchus (Qing dynasty)

1968: During the night 250,000 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia in response to the Prague Spring

1993: Oslo Peace Accords signed, after secret negotiations in Norway, followed by a public ceremony in Washington, D.C. the following month

Source: Onthisday.com