On War, Terrorism, Religion).
1910: 2,500,000 plague victims were reported in the An-Hul province of China.
1946: An earthquake and tidal wave killed hundreds of people in Japan.
1948: Ireland declared itself a republic, rather than a dominion, and withdrew from the British Commonwealth.
1958: Charles de Gaulle was elected the first President of the France's Fifth Republic.
1967: Louis Washkansky, the first human heart transplant patient, died 18 days after the operation by Dr. Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town, South Africa.
1975: Terrorists of the "Arm of the Arab Revolution" led by "Carlos the Jackal" raided the OPEC headquarters in Vienna and held 11 oil ministers and their staff hostage.
1986: 500,000 Chinese students gathered in Shanghai's People's Square calling for democratic reforms, including freedom of the press.
1988: Pan-Am flight 103, a Boeing 747, was blown up by on-board bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland; 259 passengers and crew, and 11 other people on the ground killed.
1991: 11 of the former 15 Soviet republics proclaimed the birth of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the death of the USSR. Of the other 4 former Soviet republics, 3 Baltic states were already independent and Georgia chose not to join the Commonwealth.
1993: President Boris Yeltsin abruptly abolished the former KGB security police, saying the huge force Russian citizens feared for decades was "incapable of being reformed."
1995: Bethlehem was transferred from Israeli to "Palestinian" control.