Source: HistoryNet.com
1660: The first Shakespearian actress to appear on an English stage makes her debut as Desdemona.
1920: President Woodrow Wilson declines to send a representative to the League of Nations in Geneva.
1932: Japan tells the League of Nations that it has no control over her designs in China.
1944: The United States conducts the longest, most effective air raid on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima.
1948: The United Nations approves the recognition of South Korea.
1967: In the biggest battle yet in the Mekong Delta, 365 Viet Cong are killed.
1980: John Lennon is shot to death outside his Manhattan apartment building.
1982: The Washington, D.C., police shoot and kill a man threatening to blow up the Washington Monument.
1991: The leaders of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine sign an agreement that dissolves the Soviet Union and establishes the Commonwealth of Independent States.
2010: The Japanese solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS passes the planet Venus.
2010: SpaceX becomes the first privately held company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.