| 1096 | army of the People's Crusade, part of the First Crusade, is annhilated by the Turkish Army outside of Nicaea | 921 |
| 1512 | Martin Luthur joins the faculty of the University of Wittenberg—remains on the faculty for the rest of his career | 505 |
| 1765 | Italian painter and architect Giovanni Paolo Panini dies in Rome, age 74 | 252 |
| 1772 | English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge born in Devon | 245 |
| 1797 | 44-gun frigate USS Constitution launched in Boston | 220 |
| 1805 | British fleet led by Vice Admiral Lord Nelson defeats combined French and Spanish fleets under Admiral Villeneuve in the Battle of Trafalgar | 212 |
| 1805 | Lord Horatio Nelson killed in action (age 47) during the Royal Navy victory at Trafalgar | 212 |
| 1824 | Joseph Aspdin is granted the British patent for the production of cement which he calls "Portand cement" | 193 |
| 1833 | Alfred Nobel born in Stockholm | 184 |
| 1835 | South Indian poet and composer Muthuswami Dikshitar dies, age 60 | 182 |
| 1854 | Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 volunteer nurses are sent to Turkey to join the British camp in the Crimea | 163 |
| 1867 | Medicine Lodge Treaty—three treaties signed between U.S. and Native American tribes who are assigned specific reservations | 150 |
| 1872 | French physicist, mathematician, and astronomer Jacques Babinet dies in Paris, age 78 | 145 |
| 1879 | Thomas Edison tests first practical electric light bulb | 138 |
| 1883 | first Seventh-day Adventist missionary to Europe John Nevins Andrews dies in Basel, Switzerland, age 54 | 134 |
| 1904 | Swiss explorer and writer Isabelle Wilhelmine Marie Eberhardt dies in Algeria, age 27 | 113 |
| 1910 | Royal Navy cruiser HMS Niobe arrives in Halifax as the first ship in the Royal Canadian Navy | 107 |
| 1940 | "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway published by Charles Scribner's Sons | 77 |
| 1944 | first kamikaze hit occurs on the heavy cruiser HMAS Australia during the Battle of Leyte Gulf—results in minor damage | 73 |
| 1944 | city of Aachen surrenders to American forces—first German city to fall to the Allies | 73 |
| 1945 | women are allowed to vote in France for the first time | 72 |
| 1959 | Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modern art opens to the public in New York City | 58 |
| 1966 | colliery spoil tip in the Welsh village of Aberfan collapses with 1.4 million ft3 covering part of the village—116 children and 28 adults killed | 51 |
| 1967 | Danish astronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung dies, age 94 | 50 |
| 1969 | Polish mathematician Wac | 48 |
| 1969 | American novelist Jack Kerouac dies in St. Petersburg, Florida, age 47 | 48 |
| 1976 | U.S. recipients win or share Nobel prizes in chemistry, physics, medicine, economics, and literature | 41 |
| 1980 | Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger dies in Vienna, age 74 | 37 |
| 1983 | General Conference on Weights and Measures defines the meter as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 sec | 34 |
| 1994 | Seongsu Bridge over the Han River in Seoul, South Korea, collapses—32 die and 17 others injured | 23 |
| 2003 | discovery photos taken of Eris—dwarf planet larger about same size as Pluto | 14 |
| 2011 | influential Slovene poet, translator, and essayist Tone Pavček dies, age 83 | 6 |
| 2011 | launch of a Soyuz rocket from the Arianespace Centre Spatial Guyanais in French Guiana—first launch outside former Soviet territory | 6 |
| 2011 | first two operational satellites in the ESA Galileo global navigation satellite system put into orbit | 6 |
| 2012 | Polish educator, teacher and Holocaust survivor Antoni Dobrowolski dies, age 108—oldest known survivor of Auschwitz | 5 |
| 2013 | record dense smog in Harbin, China closes schools, roadways, and the airport | 4 |
| 2015 | British influential conservationist and author Norman Winfrid Moore dies, age 91 | 2 |
Dates are always somewhat ambiguous, the exact date depends on whether local time is used (and local time where) or Universal Time—for events on the surface of the Earth, local time is probably best but for an event that spans across the planet, it is not clear which local time to use!.
For events in space it is more ambiguous.
Further for dates after the original adoption of the Gregorian calendar but before it became accepted in different countries, the date given may be a Julian date or a Gregorian date depending upon where the event occurred.
And, even the year may be different since the first of the year has not always been January 1 in all countries!
The attempt is to use a date that is the one that is typically given.
| day before yesterday | yesterday | tomorrow | day after tomorrow |