NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.

STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle ''Discovery'' takes off on its maiden voyage.

A Belgrade–Dortmund express train derails at the main train station in Zagreb killing 153 passengers.

A powerful bomb explodes at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters in Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan. 8 are killed, 378 are injured. Eight left-wing activists are arrested on May 19, 1975 by Japanese authorities.

Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Hotline between the leaders of the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union goes into operation.

Japan conducts a test of the NAMC YS-11, its first aircraft since World War II and its only successful commercial aircraft from before or after the war.

The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway opens.

Hong Kong is liberated from Japan by British Armed Forces.

The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur lands at Atsugi Air Force Base.

World War II: the Battle of Alam Halfa begins.

Battle of Dumlupinar: the final battle in the Greek-Turkish War ("Turkish War of Independence").

Fanny Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.

The Battle of Tannenberg is fought.

Burgess Shale fossils are discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott.

The town of Ambiky is captured by France from Menabe in Madagascar.

Eight provinces in the Philippines are declared under martial law by the Spanish Governor-General Ramón Blanco y Erenas. These were Manila, Cavite, Bulacan, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Bataan, Laguna, and Batangas.

Austrian explorers Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht discover the archipelago of Franz Joseph Land in the Arctic Sea.

American Civil War - Battle of Richmond: Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout Union forces under General Horatio Wright.

The city of Houston is founded by Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen

Melbourne, Australia is founded.

Battle of Kulm: French forces are defeated by an Austrian-Prussian-Russian alliance.

Creek War - Fort Mims massacre: Creek "Red Sticks" kill over 500 settlers (including over 250 armed militia) in Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama.

Gabriel Prosser leads a slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia

The entire Dutch fleet is captured by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell during the Second Coalition of the French Revolutionary Wars.

{{HMS|Pandora|1779|6}} sinks after having run aground on a reef the previous day.

Tokugawa Ieyasu enters Edo Castle. (Traditional Japanese date: August 1, 1590)

Guru Ram Das becomes the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master.

Beginning date of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders — Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang — are pitted against each other in what is one of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing, Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty.