1520: Spanish conquistadors are expelled from Tenochtitlan following an Aztec revolt against their rule under Hernán Cortés during “La Noche Triste” (the Night of Sadness). Many soldiers drown in the escape, and Aztec emperor Moctezuma II dies in the struggle.

1860: Famous debate on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution held at the Oxford University Museum and dominated by arguments between Thomas Henry Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce

1905: In Russia, the “Potemkin” arrives at Odessa, where sailors take the bodies of dead crewman ashore; sailors join civilians in revolutionary actions of the ‘1905 Revolution’

1908: A giant fireball, most likely caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet flattens 80 million trees near the Stony Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate, Russia, in the largest impact event in recorded history

1934: Adolf Hitler stages a bloody purge of the Nazi party in the “Night of the Long Knives”

1997: British lease on the New Territories in Hong Kong expires, established by the Second Convention of Peking

Source: Onthisday.com