2012: At least 27 people are killed and dozens are wounded in conflicts between inmates and guards at Welikada prison in Colombo.
2012: A train carrying liquid fuel crashes and bursts into flames in northern Myanmar, killing 27 people and injuring 80 others.
2007: The German Bundestag passes the controversial data retention bill mandating storage of citizens' telecommunications traffic data for six months without probable cause.
2005: Suicide bombers attack three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing at least 60 people.
1998: A US federal judge, in the largest civil settlement in United States history, orders 37 US brokerage houses to pay 1.03 billion United States dollars to cheated NASDAQ investors to compensate for price fixing.
1994: The chemical element darmstadtium is discovered.
1993: Stari Most, the "old bridge" in the Bosnian city of Mostar, built in 1566, collapses after several days of bombing by Croat forces during the Croat-Bosniak War.
1989: Fall of the Berlin Wall. East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to travel to West Berlin.
1979: Nuclear false alarm: The NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland detected purported massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early-warning radars, the alert is cancelled.
1965: Several U.S. states and parts of Canada are hit by a series of blackouts lasting up to 13 hours in the Northeast blackout of 1965.
1963: At Miike coal mine, Miike, Japan, an explosion kills 458, and hospitalises 839 with carbon monoxide poisoning.
1960: Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Company, the first non-Ford to serve in that post. A month later, he resigned to join the administration of newly elected John F. Kennedy.
1938: The Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath dies from gunshot wounds by Herschel Grynszpan, an act which the Nazis used as an excuse to instigate the 1938 national pogrom, also known as Kristallnacht.
1906: Theodore Roosevelt is the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.
1887: The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
1883: The 90th Winnipeg Battalion of Rifles, (later the Royal Winnipeg Rifles) of the Canadian Armed Forces is founded.
1799: Napoleon Bonaparte leads the Coup of 18 Brumaire ending the Directory government, and becoming First Consul of the successor (Consulate Government).