1791: France's Legislative Assembly convenes for the first time.
1795: France conquers Belgium.
1811: The first steamboat to travel on the Mississippi River arrives in New Orleans.
1843: The English newspaper News of the World begins publication. It closed on 10 July 2011 following the phone-hacking scandal.
1867: Karl Marx publishes Das Kapital, the crowning achievement of his work.
1869: Austria issues the world's first postcards.
1880: Thomas Edison opens the first electric light bulb factory.
1881: American engineer William Boeing, founder of the aircraft manufacturer that bears his name, is born.
1914: During the First World War, Ottoman Empire closes the Dardanelles Strait.
1920: American actor Walter Matthau is born.
1931: Women are granted the right to vote in Spain.
1935: British actress and singer Julie Andrews is born.
1936: Franco becomes head of the Nationalist government in Spain.
1943: French film director Jean-Jacques Annaud is born.
1946: The verdict is delivered in the Nuremberg trials, with 12 of the 22 prominent Nazi defendants sentenced to death as war criminals.
1959: Senegalese composer and singer Youssou N'Dour is born.
1965: Suharto crushes a coup that was to be launched against him in Indonesia.
1969: The Concorde breaks the sound barrier for the first time.
1969: In Sweden, Olof Palme is elected leader of the Social Democrats.
1971: Walt Disney World opens in Orlando, Florida.
1973: The Watergate trial begins in Washington.
1979: The transferred date of Cyprus Independence Day is celebrated as a national holiday for the first time.
1979: The United States returns sovereignty over the Panama Canal to Panama.
1982: Helmut Kohl is sworn in as West Germany's sixth Chancellor, succeeding Helmut Schmidt.
1985: American author E. B. White, who wrote the children's story Stuart Little in 1945, dies.
1988: Mikhail Gorbachev is named head of the Supreme Soviet.
1992: The American warship USS Saratoga accidentally fires on a Turkish destroyer taking part in an exercise in the Aegean, killing nine Turkish sailors.
1996: Amnesty International launches a campaign against Turkey, accusing it of gross human rights violations.
2006: A unilateral ceasefire declared by the Kurdish rebels of the PKK in south-eastern Turkey comes into effect.
2012: British historian and author Eric Hobsbawm dies.
