| 49BC | Caesarian forces are decisively defeated by the Numidains in the Battle of the Bagrades River in North Africa | 2067 |
| 79 | Mt. Vesuvius erupts, burying Pompeii and Herculaneum in southern Italy | 1940 |
| 410 | Alaric leads the Visigoths to sack Rome | 1609 |
| 1185 | Byzantine city of Thessalonica is sacked and many citizens killed after a short seige by invading Normans from the Kingdom of Sicily | 834 |
| 1215 | Pope Innocent III declares Magna Carta invalid only about two months after it was signed | 804 |
| 1572 | St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of Huguenots in Paris | 447 |
| 1595 | English astronomer Thomas Digges dies in London, age 49 | 424 |
| 1647 | English sculptor and architect Nicholas Stone dies in London, age about 0 | 372 |
| 1664 | accomplished Silesian astronomer Maria Cunitz dies, age about 54 | 355 |
| 1812 | combined Spanish, British, and Portuguese forces lift the two and a half year seige of Cádiz by the French Empire | 207 |
| 1814 | occupying British forces set fire to many public buildings in Washington D.C. including the White House | 205 |
| 1824 | Lachine Canal across the southwestern part of the Island of Montreal is completed opening the upper St Lawrence River to navigation | 195 |
| 1832 | French physicist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot dies in Paris, age 36 | 187 |
| 1841 | one of the most successful U.S. privateers during the War 1812 against the British John Ordronaux dies, age 62 | 178 |
| 1856 | Henry Bessemer first describes the process he developed for producing steel in a meeting of the British Association | 163 |
| 1888 | one of the central founders of thermodynamics, German physicist Rudolf Clausius dies, age 66 | 131 |
| 1901 | nurse Clara Maass dies, age 25, after volunteering to be bitten by yellow fever infected mosquitos | 118 |
| 1909 | building the Pananma Canal locks begins with the first concrete poured at Gatun | 110 |
| 1912 | Territory of Alaska is formed—exists until statehood in 1959 | 107 |
| 1914 | Battle of Cer—Serb victory over the invading Austro-Hungarians is the first Allied victory over the Central Powers in the Great War | 105 |
| 1942 | last successful cavalry charge—Italian forces mount a charge against a Soviet artillery position along the River Don | 77 |
| 1968 | France tests its first thermonuclear device at Fangataufa Atoll—yields 2.6 megatons | 51 |
| 1979 | German record setting aviator and the only woman awarded the Iron Cross First Class Hanna Reitsch dies in Frankfort, age 67 | 40 |
| 1989 | Pete Rose is banned for life from baseball for gambling | 30 |
| 1991 | Ukraine declares itself an independent state | 28 |
| 1995 | German-American photographer and photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt dies on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, age 96 | 24 |
| 1995 | Microsoft releases Windows 95 | 24 |
| 1998 | American actor E. G. Marshall (born Everett Eugene Grunz) dies in Bedford, New York, age 84 | 21 |
| 1998 | British scientist Kevin Warwick is the first RFID human implantation | 21 |
| 2000 | Swiss karateka and heavyweight kickboxer Andreas "Andy" Hug dies in Tokyo, age 35 | 19 |
| 2001 | American film and television actress Jane Greer (born Bettejane Greer) dies in Los Angeles, age 76 | 18 |
| 2003 | Ethiopian-born English explorer and travel writer Wilfred Patrick Thesiger dies, in London, age 93 | 16 |
| 2004 | Swiss-born psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross dies, age 78 | 15 |
| 2004 | suicide bombs explode on two passenger flights taking off from Domodedovo International Airport in Moscow—all 90 on board killed | 15 |
| 2006 | IAU votes to reclassify Pluto—no longer a planet | 13 |
| 2010 | Japanese film director, animator, screenwriter, and manga artist Satoshi Kon dies in Tokyo, age 46 | 9 |
| 2010 | San Fernando massacre—72 illegal immigrants are killed by Los Zetas drug cartel in the village of El Huizachal, Mexico | 9 |
| 2013 | American stage, screen, and television actress Julia Ann Harris (Julie Harris) dies in West Chatham, Massachusetts, age 87 | 6 |
| 2014 | English actor, film director, and producer Richard Samuel Attenborough dies in Cambridge, UK, age 90 | 5 |
| 2014 | 6.0 earthquake strikes near Napa, California | 5 |
| 2015 | Facebook logs one billion users in a single day for the first time | 4 |
| 2016 | 6.2 earthquake devastates Amatrice in central Italy—290 dead | 3 |
| 2016 | Jeff Williams reaches 521 days in space breaking the total record set by Scott Kelly for an American astronaut | 3 |
| 2016 | discovery of Proxima Centauri b announced confirmed—closest known exoplanet at 4.2 light-years | 3 |
| 2017 | American actor, comedian, and morning radio personality Jay Thomas (born Jon Thomas Terrell) dies in Santa Barbara, California, age 69 | 2 |
| 2017 | FORMOSAT-5, first National Space Organization (NSPO) of Taiwan indigenously developed remote sensing satellite, launched | 2 |
| 2017 | Powerball lottery produces a single winner—$758 million is largest individual payout in history | 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 |