# 46 BC - Julius Caesar defeats Caecilius Metellus Scipio and Marcus Porcius Cato in the battle of Thapsus.
# 1652 - Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck establishes a resupply camp at the Cape of Good Hope, which eventually becomes Cape Town.
# 1917 - World War I: The United States declares war on Germany (see President Woodrow Wilson's address to Congress).
# 1930 - Gandhi raises a lump of mud and salt and declares, "With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire." Thus he starts the Salt Satyagraha.
# 1994 - The Rwandan Genocide begins when the aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira is shot down.