2013: Several small bombs explode outside a provincial office of the Chinese Communist Party in the northern city of Taiyuan, killing at least one person and wounding eight others.
2012: Barack Obama is reelected President of the United States; Tammy Baldwin becomes the first openly gay politician to be elected to the United States Senate.
2004: An express train collides with a stationary car near the village of Ufton Nervet, England, killing seven and injuring 150.
1999: Australians vote to keep the Head of the Commonwealth as their head of state in the Australian republic referendum.
1985: In Colombia, leftist guerrillas of the 19th of April Movement seize control of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, eventually killing 115 people, 11 of them Supreme Court justices.
1984: Ronald Reagan is reelected President of the United States.
1965: Cuba and the United States formally agree to begin an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States. By 1971, 250,000 Cubans had made use of this program.
1962: The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution condemning South Africa's apartheid policies and calls for all UN member states to cease military and economic relations with the nation.
1947: Meet the Press, the longest running television program in history, makes its debut.
1945: Concerned that her cover was about to be blown, Elizabeth Bentley turns herself in to the FBI and confesses she had been spying for the Soviet Union.
1944: Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility and subsequently used in the Fat Man atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
1943: World War II: The Soviet Red Army recaptures Kiev. Before withdrawing, the Germans destroy most of the city's ancient buildings.
1935: Edwin Armstrong presents his paper "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation" to the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers.
1865: American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on a cruise on which it sank or captured 37 unarmed merchant vessels.
963: Synod of Rome: Emperor Otto I calls a council at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Pope John XII is deposed on charges of a armed rebellion against Otto.
447: A powerful earthquake destroys large portions of the Walls of Constantinople, including 57 towers.
355: Roman emperorConstantius II promotes his cousin Julian to the rank of Caesar, entrusting him with the government of the Prefecture of the Gauls.