326: Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, discovers the Cross of the Passion in Jerusalem.
1812: Napoleon's army enters Moscow. The exhausted soldiers find a city deserted by its inhabitants and without provisions, which becomes engulfed in flames at midnight the same day. The fires were set by the Russians themselves, leaving the French army at the mercy of the harsh Russian winter.
1813: The "Filiki Eteria" (Friendly Society) is founded in Odessa by Nikolaos Skoufas, Emmanouil Xanthos and Athanasios Tsakalov.
1849: Ivan Pavlov, Russian psychologist and researcher, is born; he became famous for his experiments with his dog.
1878: Ion Dragoumis, diplomat, politician and writer, is born.
1886: The typewriter ribbon is patented.
1925: The first group exhibition of surrealist painters opens in Paris, at the Pierre Loeb gallery, with works by Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Giorgio de Chirico, Hans Arp and Man Ray.
1927: American dancer Isadora Duncan, regarded as a pioneer and "mother" of modern dance, dies.
1933: Greek Prime Minister Panagis Tsaldaris signs a Greek-Turkish pact in Ankara, under which Greece and Turkey mutually guarantee the inviolability of their common border, the Evros river.
1959: The Russian probe Luna 2 becomes the first man-made object to reach the surface of the Moon. The achievement gives the USSR the lead over the United States in the race to conquer space.
1960: Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela found OPEC.
1960: M. Karagatsis, literary pseudonym of Dimitris Rodopoulos, writer ("Yougkermann", "Colonel Liapkin"), dies.
1965: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is born.
1982: Grace Kelly, actress and Princess of Monaco, dies at the age of 52.
1983: British singer Amy Winehouse, who died in 2011 at the age of 27, is born.
1992: Iran assures Turkey that it will support its fight against Kurdish separatists.
1996: In Bosnia, polling stations open for the country's first free post-war elections.
1999: Shortly before landing in Bucharest, an aircraft carrying the Greek Foreign Ministry delegation hits an air pocket. Cypriot-born Deputy Foreign Minister Yiannos Kranidiotis, his son Nikolas and four other people are killed.
2001: Singer Stelios Kazantzidis dies at the age of 70.
2003: Sweden votes "no" to the euro in a referendum.
2009: Actor Patrick Swayze dies of cancer.
