Events
1768 – In London, England, Great Britain, Philip Astley stages the first modern circus.
1799 – British prime minister William Pitt the Younger introduced income tax to raise funds for the Napoleonic Wars.
1822 – The Portuguese prince Pedro I of Brazil decides to stay in Brazil against the orders of the Portuguese King João VI, starting the Brazilian independence process.
1848 – The first commercial bank was established in San Francisco.
1936 – The US Army adopted semi-automatic rifles.
2003 – Archaeologists announced that they had found five more chambers in the tomb of Qin Shihuang, China’s first emperor.
Births
1475 – Crinitus, Florentine humanist (d. 1507)
1554 – Pope Gregory XV (d. 1623)
1571 – Charles Bonaventure de Longueval, Count of Bucquoy, soldier in Habsburg service (d. 1621)
1589 – Ivan Gundulić, Croatian poet (d. 1638)
1624 – Empress Meishō (d. 1696)
1685 – Tiberius Hemsterhuis, Dutch philologist (d. 1766)
1728 – Thomas Warton, English poet (d. 1790)
