| 558 | Frankish King of the Merovingian dynasty Childebert I dies after reign of 47 years, age about 61 | 1460 |
| 1048 | Persian mathematician and scientist Abu al-Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni dies, age 75 | 970 |
| 1466 | Italian Rennaissance artist and sculptor Donatello dies in Florence, age 80 | 552 |
| 1545 | Council of Trent convenes | 473 |
| 1557 | Italian mathematician Niccolò Fontana Tartaglia dies, age around 57 | 461 |
| 1577 | Francis Drake leaves Plymouth, England on his voyage that circumnavigates the world | 441 |
| 1636 | Massachusetts Bay Colony orders scattered militia companies be organized—origins of state militias and the National Guard | 382 |
| 1642 | New Zealand discovered by Dutch explorer Abel Tasman | 376 |
| 1643 | Parliamentary forces decisively defeat an outnumbered Royalist garrison in the Battle of Alton in Hampshire | 375 |
| 1716 | French painter Charles de La Fosse dies, age 80 | 302 |
| 1721 | Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, after being marooned for four years is the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, dies, age about 45 | 297 |
| 1769 | Dartmouth College is founded by the Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, with a Royal Charter from King George III | 249 |
| 1783 | Swedish astronomer and demographer Pehr Wilhelm Wargentin dies in Stockholm, age 66 | 235 |
| 1784 | English writer Samuel Johnson dies in London, age 75 | 234 |
| 1862 | Union army suffer extensive casualties by entrenched Confederate defenders in the Battle of Fredricksburg in Virginia | 156 |
| 1868 | German botanist and Brazil explorer Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius dies, age 74 | 150 |
| 1887 | Hungarian mathematician George Pólya is born in Budapest | 131 |
| 1895 | Hungarian physicist, engineer, inventor, and Benedictine priest Ányos István Jedlik dies, age 95 | 123 |
| 1907 | Nellah Keith born in Alabama | 111 |
| 1908 | Mt. Wilson's 60-inch telescope, first large modern reflector, sees first light | 110 |
| 1909 | Russian poet Innokentiy Fyodorovich Annensky dies in St. Petersburg, age 54 | 109 |
| 1919 | German physicist Woldemar Voigt dies in Göttingen, age 69 | 99 |
| 1924 | English-born labor union leader Samuel Gompers dies, age 74 | 94 |
| 1928 | George Gershwin's An American in Paris is first performed in Carnegie Hall in New York City | 90 |
| 1935 | French chemist and Nobel laureate (1912) François Auguste Victor Grignard dies in Lyon, age 64 | 83 |
| 1937 | Japanese forces capture Nanking, capital of the Republic of China—following six weeks are filled with atrocities against the civilians | 81 |
| 1939 | Battle of the River Plate results in the scuttling of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee 4 days later | 79 |
| 1950 | Hungarian mathematician Abraham Wald is killed in a plane crash in India, age 48 | 68 |
| 1955 | Portuguese neurologist, a founder of modern psychosurgery, and Nobel laureate (1949) António Egas Moniz dies in Lisbon, age 81 | 63 |
| 1961 | American painter Anna Mary Robertson Moses (Grandma Moses) dies in Hoosick Falls, New York, age 101 | 57 |
| 1962 | first active communications satellite, Relay 1, is launched by NASA | 56 |
| 1978 | U.S. Mint begins stamping the Susan B. Anthony dollar | 40 |
| 1983 | Detroit Pistons win 186-184 in triple-overtime over the Denver Nuggets—370 total is highest scoring NBA game | 35 |
| 1997 | American historian, author, and Pulizer Prize winner Don Edward Fehrenbacher dies in Palo Alto, California, age 77 | 21 |
| 2001 | American singer, songwriter, and guitarist Charles Michael "Chuck" Schuldiner dies in Long Island, New York, age 34 | 17 |
| 2004 | British computer scientist and recipient of the first Ph.D. in computer science in 1951 David John Wheeler dies, age 77 | 14 |
| 2006 | American sportsman and promoter of professional sports in the U.S. Lamar Hunt dies in Dallas, age 74 | 12 |
| 2009 | American economist and Nobel laureate Paul Anthony Samuelson dies, age 94 | 9 |
| 2011 | attacker kills 6 and injures 125 others in the city of Liège, Belgium, before killing himself | 7 |
| 2012 | closest encounter of China's Chang'e 2 with asteroid Toutatis | 6 |
| 2012 | NASA launches a sounding rocket Diffuse X-ray emission from the Local galaxy (DXL)—first mission with Earth in the helium-focusing cone | 6 |
| 2014 | after heavy rain for a number of days a landslide in Banjarnegara, Central Java, Indonesia, kills 93 with 23 people missing | 4 |
| 2016 | Canadian actor, songwriter, game and talk show host Alan Willis Thicke (born Alan Willis Jeffrey) dies in Burbank, California, age 69 | 2 |
| 2017 | American heavy metal musician and singer Warrel Dane (born Warrel G. Baker) dies in São Paulo, age 56 | 1 |
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 |