1807 - A British military force, under Brig-Gen. Sir Samuel Auchmuty captures the city of Montevideo, then part of the Spanish Empire now capital of Uruguay.
1870 - The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, granting voting rights to citizens regardless of race.
1900 - Gubernatorial candidate William Goebel is assassinated in Frankfort, Kentucky.
1908 - Foundation of Panathinaikos in Athens, Greece.
1913 - The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose and collect an income tax.
1916 - Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Canada burn down.
1917 - World War I: The United States breaks off diplomatic relations with Germany a day after the former announced a new policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.
1918 - The Twin Peaks Tunnel begins service as the longest streetcar tunnel in the world at 11,920 feet (3,633 meters) long.
1923 - The Alpha Zeta chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia founded at Pennsylvania State University.
1930 - The Communist Party of Vietnam is established.
1931 - The Hawke's Bay earthquake, New Zealand's worst natural disaster, kills 258.
1941 - World War II: Nazi Germany forcibly restores Pierre Laval to office in occupied Vichy, France.
1944 - World War II: United States troops capture the Marshall Islands.
1945 - World War II: The Soviet Union agrees to enter the Pacific Theatre conflict against Japan.
1945 - World War II: As part of Operation Thunderclap, 1,000 B-17's of the Eighth Air Force bomb Berlin.
1947 - The lowest temperature in North America is recorded in Snag, Yukon.
1957 - Senegalese political party Democratic Rally merges into the Senegalese Party of Socialist Action (PSAS).
1958 - Founding of the Benelux Economic Union, creating a testing ground for a later European Economic Community.
1959 - A plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa kills Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, The Big Bopper, and Roger Peterson also known as The Day the Music Died.
1966 - The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.
1967 - Ronald Ryan, the last person to be executed in Australia, is hanged in Pentridge Prison, Melbourne.
1969 - In Cairo, Yasser Arafat is appointed Palestine Liberation Organization leader at the Palestinian National Congress.
1971 - New York Police Office Frank Serpico is shot during a drug bust in Brooklyn and survives to later testify against police corruption.. Many believed the incident proved NYPD officers tried to kill him.
1988 - Iran-Contra Affair: The United States House of Representatives rejects President Ronald Reagan's request for $36.25 million to aid Nicaraguan Contras.
1989 - After a stroke, P.W. Botha resigns party leadership and the presidency of South Africa.
1989 - A military coup overthrows Alfredo Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay since 1954.
1991 - The Italian Communist Party dissolves and splits into the Democratic Party of the Left and the Communist Refoundation Party.
1998 - Karla Faye Tucker is executed in Texas becoming the first woman executed in the United States since 1984.
1998 - Cavalese cable-car disaster: a United States Military pilot causes the death of 20 people when his low-flying plane cuts the cable of a cable-car near Trento, Italy.
1999 - In Jammu and Kashmir the political party Democratic Janata Dal (Jammu and Kashmir) is revived.
2007 - A Baghdad market bombing kills at least 135 people and injures a further 339.
2009 - German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticizes Pope Benedict XVI's decision to lift the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson, who has said no Nazi gas chambers existed.
2010 - The sculpture L'Homme qui marche I by Alberto Giacometti sells in London for £65 million (US$103.7 million), setting a new world record for a work of art sold at auction.
