2012: At least 130 rockets are fired into Israel from Gaza; 12 Palestinians militants are killed as part of the latest escalation in violence in the region.
1997: Comet Hale-Bopp: Observers in China, Mongolia and eastern Siberia are treated to a rare double feature as an eclipse permits Hale-Bopp to be seen during the day.
1977: The Hanafi Siege: In a thirty-nine-hour standoff, armed Hanafi Muslims seize three Washington, D.C., buildings, killing two and taking 149 hostage.
1976: Forty-two people died in the 1976 Cavalese cable car disaster, the worst cable-car accident to date.
1974: The Mars 7 Flyby bus releases the descent module too early, dus it missing mars.
1967: Trans World Airlines Flight 553, a Douglas DC-9-15, crashes in a field in Concord Township, Ohio following a mid-air collision with a Beechcraft Baron, killing 26.
1961: Sputnik 9 successfully launches, carrying a human dummy nicknamed Ivan Ivanovich, and demonstrating that Soviet Union was ready to begin human spaceflight.
1960: Dr. Belding Hibbard Scribner implants for the first time a shunt he invented into a patient, which allows the patient to receive hemodialysis on a regular basis.
1957: The 8.6 Mw Andreanof Islands earthquake shakes the Aleutian Islands with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe), causing $5 million in damage from ground movement and a destructive tsunami that affected Hawaii, where two people were killed in a plane crash while documenting its arrival.
1956: Soviet forces suppress mass demonstrations in the Georgian SSR, reacting to Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy.
1946: Bolton Wanderers stadium disaster at Burnden Park, Bolton, England, kills 33 and injures hundreds more.
1945: World War II: A coup d'état by Japanese forces in French Indochina removes the French from power.
1945: World War II: The first nocturnal incendiary attack on Tokyo inflicts damage comparable to that inflicted on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later.
1944: World War II: Soviet Army planes attack Tallinn, Estonia.
1944: World War II: Japanese troops counter-attack American forces on Hill 700 in Bougainville in a five-day battle.
1942: World War II: Dutch East Indies, represented by KNIL Commander in Chief Lieutenant General Hein Ter Poorten, unconditionally surrendered to the Japanese forces in Kalijati, Subang, West Java, and Japanese completed their Dutchmmjn East Indies campaign.
1842: Giuseppe Verdi's third opera, Nabucco, receives its première performance in Milan; its success establishes Verdi as one of Italy's foremost opera composers.
1841: The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the United States v. The Amistad case that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them had been taken into slavery illegally.
1831: The French Foreign Legion is established by King Louis Philippe to support his war in Algeria.
1765: After a campaign by the writer Voltaire, judges in Paris posthumously exonerate Jean Calas of murdering his son. Calas had been tortured and executed in 1762 on the charge, though his son may have actually committed suicide.