1894 - The first playoff game for the Stanley Cup starts.
1895 - First display (a private screening) of motion pictures by Auguste and Louis Lumière.
1923 - The first radio broadcast of ice hockey is made by Foster Hewitt.
1933 - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs into law a bill legalizing the sale of beer and wine.
1939 - World War II: Germany takes Memel from Lithuania.
1941 - Washington's Grand Coulee Dam begins to generate electricity.
1942 - World War II: In the Mediterranean Sea, Britain's Royal Navy confronts Italy's Regia Marina in the Second Battle of Sirte.
1943 - World War II: the entire population of Khatyn in Belarus is burnt alive by German occupation forces.
1945 - The Arab League is founded when a charter is adopted in Cairo, Egypt.
1954 - Closed since 1939, the London bullion market reopens.
1960 - Arthur Leonard Schawlow & Charles Hard Townes receive the first patent for a laser.
1975 - A fire at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant in Decatur, Alabama causes dangerous lowering of cooling water levels.
1978 - Karl Wallenda of the The Flying Wallendas dies after falling off a tight-rope between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
1979 - Margaret Thatcher puts down an early day motion censuring the government, which leads to the defeat of the Labour government of James Callaghan.
1984 - Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with Satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges are later dropped as completely unfounded.
1989 - Clint Malarchuk of the Buffalo Sabres suffers a near-fatal injury when another player accidentally slits his throat.
1993 - The Intel Corporation ships the first Pentium chips (80586), featuring a 60 MHz clock speed, 100+ MIPS, and a 64 bit data path.
1995 - Cosmonaut Valeriy Polyakov returns after setting a record for 438 days in space.
1997 - Tara Lipinski, age 14 years and 10 months, becomes the youngest champion of the women's world figure skating competition.
1997 - The Comet Hale-Bopp has its closest approach to earth.
2004 - Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and leader of the Palestinian Sunni Islamist militant group Hamas, and bodyguards are killed in the Gaza Strip when hit by Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache fired Hellfire missiles.
2006 - ETA, armed Basque separatist group, declares permanent ceasefire.
2006 - BC Ferries' M/V Queen of the North runs aground on Gil Island British Columbia and sinks; 101 on board, 2 presumed deaths.
2006 - Three Christian Peacemaker Teams Hostages are freed by British forces in Baghdad after 118 days captivity and the death of their colleague, American Tom Fox.
2008 - The French Swimmer Alain Bernard sets the world record of 47.50 for the 100 m freestyle long course after winning the European LC Championships 2008.
2012 - The President of Mali, Amadou Toumani Touré, is ousted in a coup d'état after mutinous soldiers attack government offices.
