| 1799 | |
Napoleon Bonaparte participates in a coup and declares
himself dictator of France. |
| 1848 | | The first U.S. Post Office in California opens in San Francisco at Clay and Pike streets. At the time there are only about 15,000 European settlers living in the state. |
| 1900 | | Russia completes its occupation of Manchuria. |
| 1906 | | President Theodore Roosevelt leaves Washington, D.C., for a 17-day trip to Panama and Puerto Rico, becoming the first president to make an official visit outside of the United States. |
| 1914 | |
The Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney
wrecks the German cruiser Emden, forcing her to beach on a reef on North
Keeling Island in the Indian Ocean. |
| 1918 | | Germany is proclaimed a republic as the kaiser abdicates and flees to the Netherlands. |
| 1935 | |
Japanese troops invade Shanghai, China. |
| 1938 | |
Nazis kill 35 Jews, arrest thousands and destroy
Jewish synagogues, homes and stores throughout Germany. The event becomes known
as Kristallnacht, the night of the shattered glass. |
| 1965 | |
Roger Allen LaPorte, a 22-year-old former seminarian
and a member of the Catholic worker movement, immolates himself at the United
Nations in New York City in protest of the Vietnam War. |
| 1965 | | Nine Northeastern states and parts of Canada go dark in the worst power failure in history, when a switch at a station near Niagara Falls fails. |
| 1967 | | NASA launches Apollo 4 into orbit with the first successful test of a Saturn V rocket. |
| 1972 | | Bones discovered by the Leakeys push human origins back 1 million years. |
| 1983 | | Alfred Heineken, beer brewer from Amsterdam, is kidnapped and held for a ransom of more than $10 million. |
| 1989 | | The Berlin Wall is opened after dividing the city for 28 years. |
|
