In 1889, the Paris Exposition formally opened, featuring the just-completed Eiffel Tower.

In 1937, the hydrogen-filled German airship Hindenburg burned and crashed in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 35 of the 97 people on board and a Navy crewman on the ground.

In 1942, during the Second World War some 15,000 Americans and Filipinos on Corregidor surrendered to the Japanese.

In 1954, medical student Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile during a track meet in Oxford, England, in three minutes, 59.4 seconds.

In 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1960. Britain's Princess Margaret married Antony Armstrong-Jones, a commoner, at Westminster Abbey. (They divorced in 1978.)

In 1994, the Queen and French President Francois Mitterrand formally opened the Channel Tunnel between their countries.

In 2002, right-wing Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was shot and killed in Hilversum, Netherlands. (Volkert van der Graaf was later convicted of killing Fortuyn and was sentenced to 18 years in prison.)

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

"The people no longer believe in principles, but will probably periodically believe in saviours." – Jacob Christoph Burckhardt, Swiss historian (1818-1897).