| 334BC | Alexander the Great's Macedonian army defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus | 2352 |
| 337 | Constantine dies, age about 65 | 1682 |
| 853 | Byzantine navy attacks the poorly defended port city of Damietta on the Nile Delta—city is plundered and burnt | 1166 |
| 1455 | First Battle of St Albans marks the beginning of the Wars of the Roses—decisive Yorkist victory capturing king Henry VI | 564 |
| 1622 | Dutch-Flemish astronomer, cartographer and clergyman Petrus Plancius dies, age around 70 | 397 |
| 1761 | first life insurance policy in the United States issued in Philadelphia | 258 |
| 1762 | Trevi Fountain in Rome is officially opened and inaugurated by Pope Clemens XIII | 257 |
| 1802 | Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, first "First Lady", dies at Mount Vernon, Virginia, age 70 | 217 |
| 1813 | German composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner born in Leipzig | 206 |
| 1832 | Rideau Canal opens connecting Ottawa to Kingston on Lake Ontario—oldest continuously operated canal system in North America | 187 |
| 1849 | Abraham Lincoln receives a patent for buoying boats | 170 |
| 1859 | Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, author, born in Edinburgh | 160 |
| 1868 | German physicist and mathematician Julius Plücker dies in Bonn, age 66 | 151 |
| 1885 | French author Victor Marie Hugo dies in Paris, age 83 | 134 |
| 1897 | Blackwall Tunnel underneath the River Thames in east London opens | 122 |
| 1906 | Orville and Wilbur Wright are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their "Flying-Machine" | 113 |
| 1915 | Quintinshill rail disaster in Dumfriesshire, Scotland involving 5 trains kills 226 and injures 246 others—deadliest rail crash in the UK | 104 |
| 1915 | Lassen Peak in Northern California erupts in a powerful explosion | 104 |
| 1927 | 8.3 earthquake near Xining, China, causes over 200,000 deaths | 92 |
| 1947 | first launch of CORPORAL—U.S. first ballistic missile | 72 |
| 1960 | Great Chilean Earthquake—most powerful recorded earthquake (9.5)—off the coast of Chile near Santiago | 59 |
| 1962 | composer Richard Rogers wins an Emmy and becomes the first person to win an EGOT: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony award | 57 |
| 1967 | a fire at the Innovation department store in Brussels kills 323—most deadly fire in Belgian history | 52 |
| Cheryl's birthday! | ||
| 1968 | USS Scorpion becomes the second U.S. nuclear submarine lost | 51 |
| 1969 | Lunar Module of Apollo 10, Snoopy, makes its closest approach to the lunar surface—47,400 feet (14.4 km) | 50 |
| 1980 | pioneering video arcade game Pac-Man first released in Japan | 39 |
| 1987 | first Rugby Union World Cup tournament begins—co-hosted by New Zealand and Australia | 32 |
| 1990 | American professional boxer Thomas Rocco Barbella (Rocky Graziano) dies in New York City, age 71 | 29 |
| 1990 | Windows 3.0 is released by Microsoft | 29 |
| 1997 | American bacteriologist and geneticist and Nobel laureate (1969) Alfred Day Hershey dies in Syosset, New York, age 88 | 22 |
| 1998 | Israeli-born Australian mathematical physicist José Enrique Moyal dies in Canberra, age 87 | 21 |
| 2001 | Kuiper belt object Ixion discovered | 18 |
| 2008 | American science fiction and fantasy author Robert Lynn Asprin dies in New Orleans, age 61 | 11 |
| 2010 | U.S. teenager Jordan Romero, age 13 years, 10 months, and 10 days, is the youngest person to stand on the summit of Mount Everest | 9 |
| 2010 | remains of Nicolaus Copernicus are reburied with full religious honors in the Frombork Cathedral | 9 |
| 2010 | American mathematician and science writer Martin Gardner dies in Norman, Oklahoma, age 95 | 9 |
| 2010 | Inter Milan wins the Champions League final in Madrid–first Italian team to win historic treble (Serie A, Coppa Italia, Champions League) | 9 |
| 2012 | launch of Dragon C2 built by SpaceX—first privately developed mission to the International Space Station | 7 |
| 2012 | Tokyo Skytree opens—at 634.0 metres (2,080 ft) is the tallest tower in the world | 7 |
| 2014 | inaugural Genesis Prize is awarded to Michael R. Bloomberg | 5 |
| 2014 | terrorist bombing attack in a busy street market in Ürümqi, China results in 43 killed and over 90 others injured | 5 |
| 2016 | world's largest cruise ship Royal Carribean's Harmony of the Seas departs Southampton, England, on her maiden voyage | 3 |
| 2017 | suicide bombing during an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, U.K., kills 22 and injuries 59 others | 2 |
| 2017 | first visit by a sitting U.S. president to the Western Wall in Jerusalem | 2 |
| 2018 | American Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Philip Milton Roth dies in New York CIty, age 85 | 1 |
| 2018 | Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) twin satellite launches on a Falcon 9 | 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 |