1919 - The first balloon arrived in New York after crossing the Atlantic Ocean.
1942 - Diary writer Anne Frank and her family sought refuge in Amsterdam to escape the Nazis.
1962 - William Faulkner, the American novelist and Nobel Prize laureate, passed away.
1967 - The Nigerian Civil War broke out due to the declaration of independence of Biafra.
1971 - Jazz musician Louis Armstrong passed away. His groups, The Hot Five and Hot Seven, had a revolutionary impact on jazz music from 1925 to 1927.
1994 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat were awarded the United Nations Peace Prize in Paris.
1998 - American film actor Roy Rogers, known as the "Singing Cowboy," passed away.
1999 - Labor Party leader Ehud Barak was sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Israel after defeating right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a landslide in the May elections.
2005 - U.S. President George W. Bush celebrated his fifty-ninth birthday with the Queen of Denmark.
2008 - Rafael Nadal defeated Roger Federer to become the first Spaniard in over 4 decades to win the Wimbledon men's singles title.
2013 - A train derailed in Lac-Mégantic, Canada, causing several tankers carrying oil to explode.
