1618 - Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded under a sentence that had been brought against him 15 years earlier for conspiracy against King James I.
1863 - The International Committee of the Red Cross was founded.
1923 - Turkey formally became a republic after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
1929 - America's Great Depression began with the crash of the Wall Street stock market.
1956 - Israel invaded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula during the Suez Canal Crisis.
1991 - The U.S. Galileo spacecraft became the first to visit an asteroid (Gaspra).
1996 - An auction was held to sell the artwork that had been stolen by the Nazis during the German occupation of Austria during World War II.
1998 - South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission condemned both apartheid and violence committed by the African National Congress.
1998 - The space shuttle Discovery blasted off with John Glenn on board. Glenn was 77 years old. In 1962 he became the first American to orbit the Earth.
1998 - The oldest known copy of Archimedes' work sold for $2 million at a New York auction.