2009Air France flight 447 crashes into the Atlantic
1979Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) ends 90 years of white rule
1978The U.S. reports finding wiretaps in the American embassy in Moscow.
1974The Heimlich maneuver is published
1963Governor George Wallace vows to defy an injunction ordering integration of the University of Alabama.
1958Charles de Gaulle becomes premier of France.
1945The first group of Berlin women start clearing the rubble of World War II
1941The German Army completes the capture of Crete as the Allied evacuation ends.
1939The Douglas DC-4 makes its first passenger flight from Chicago to New York.
1932Christopher Lasch, American social critic and writer.
1926Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jean Mortenson, later Norma Jean Baker), film actress and icon.
1921A white mob attacks the thriving Black community of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing 85 people in what comes to be known as the Tulsa Race Massacre.
1916The National Defense Act increases the strength of the U.S. National Guard by 450,000 men.
1915Germany conducts the first zeppelin air raid over England.
1901John van Druten, English playwright (I am a Camera).