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A suicide bomber kills 68 people (including first responders) in Baghdad on the same day that a gunman kills eight students in Jerusalem.
Three Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers are shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar in Operation Flavius.
The British ferry MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes in about 90 seconds, killing 193.
In the United Kingdom, a walkout at Cortonwood Colliery in Brampton Bierlow signals the start of a strike that lasted almost a year and involved the majority [but never all] of the country's miners.
Algiers Accord: Iran and Iraq announce a settlement of their border dispute.
For the first time the Zapruder film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is shown in motion to a national TV audience by Robert J. Groden and Dick Gregory.
An explosion at the Weather Underground safe house in Greenwich Village kills three.
Three rebels are executed by Rhodesia, the first executions since UDI, prompting international condemnation.
Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States.
Premier Tom Playford of South Australia loses power after 27 years in office.
Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad officially gives boxing champion Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali.
Ghana becomes the first Sub-Saharan country to gain independence from the British.
Georgy Malenkov succeeds Joseph Stalin as Premier of the Soviet Union and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Ho Chi Minh signs an agreement with France which recognizes Vietnam as an autonomous state in the Indochinese Federation and the French Union.
World War II: Operation Spring Awakening, the last major German offensive of the war, begins.
Norman Rockwell published Freedom from Want in The Saturday Evening Post with a matching essay by Carlos Bulosan as part of the Four Freedoms series.
International Unemployment Day demonstrations globally initiated by the Comintern
Portuguese Communist Party is founded as the Portuguese Section of the Communist International.
Italo-Turkish War: Italian forces become the first to use airships in war, as two dirigibles drop bombs on Turkish troops encamped at Janzur, from an altitude of 6,000 feet.
Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.
The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case.
Texas Revolution: Battle of the Alamo - After a thirteen-day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers, including frontiersman Davy Crockett and colonel Jim Bowie, defending the Alamo are killed and the fort is captured.
The Missouri Compromise is signed into law by President James Monroe. The compromise allows Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, brings Maine into the Union as a free state, and makes the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.
The First Fleet arrives at Norfolk Island in order to found a convict settlement.
The first joint Secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg, publishes the first issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
Thirteen Years' War: Delegates of the Prussian Confederation pledge allegiance to King Casimir IV of Poland who agrees to commit his forces in aiding the Confederation's struggle for independence from the Teutonic Knights.
The Siege of Château Gaillard ends in a French victory over King John of England, who loses control of Normandy to King Philip II Augustus.
Byzantine conquest of Chandax by Nikephoros Phokas, end of the Emirate of Crete.
The Farewell Sermon (Khutbah, Khutbatul Wada') of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
The Roman Emperor Augustus is named Pontifex Maximus, incorporating the position into that of the emperor.
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