585 BC Solar eclipse. Thales of Miletus records the first solar eclipse in history. The event, which halted a battle between the Medes and the Lydians in Asia Minor, is one of the most significant dates in ancient history, as it has been used to calculate the chronology of other events. It is also considered the earliest event in recorded history whose exact date is known with modern certainty.
1738 Birth of Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, French physician after whom the guillotine was named.
1843 Death of Noah Webster, American lexicographer and author, creator of the famous English-language dictionary that bears his name.
1871 The Paris Commune is crushed.
1908 Birth of Ian Fleming, British journalist, author and intelligence officer, who wrote the James Bond series of novels.
1918 Armenia and Azerbaijan declare independence.
1926 A coup takes place in Portugal, establishing a dictatorship.
1930 The Chrysler Building in New York officially opens its doors.
1934 The Dionne quintuplets are born in a village near Ontario, Canada - the first set of quintuplets recorded in history to have all survived. They were also the first known case of five identical girls. Sadly, the five sisters were treated for many years as a tourist attraction by the government.
1940 During the Second World War, Belgium surrenders to Germany.
1952 Women in Greece gain the right to vote.
1961 Amnesty International is founded. The organisation will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 16 years later for its contribution to the protection of human rights.
1964 The PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, is founded.
1968 Birth of Australian singer and actress Kylie Minogue.
1977 A fire at a club in Kentucky kills 165 people.
1979 The agreement for Greece's accession to the European Economic Community is signed at the Zappeion in Athens. The agreement is signed on the Greek side by Konstantinos Karamanlis.
1995 An earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale strikes the Russian city of Neftegorsk, killing more than 2,000 people.
1999 An Albanian man hijacks a bus in Thessaloniki and drives it to Albania. During a police operation outside Elbasan, both the hijacker and hostage Giorgos Koulouris are killed.
2000 The Mars Odyssey mission discovers large quantities of ice on Mars.
2003 Death of Ilya Prigogine, Russian-Belgian chemist with significant work in thermodynamics, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1977.
2004 Death of Umberto Agnelli, one of the founders of FIAT, politician and honorary president of Juventus.
2014 Death of Maya Angelou, American author.
