1921 - Italian opera tenor Enrico Caruso died in Naples.
1923 - U.S. President Warren Harding died in San Francisco while returning from a trip to Alaska, and was succeeded by Calvin Coolidge.
1939 - Albert Einstein wrote, expressing concern that German scientists were working on powerful bombs using uranium.
1996 - American sprinter Michael Johnson became the first man to win both the 200-meter and 400-meter races in the same Olympic Games.
1997 - American counterculture writer William S. Burroughs, a member of the "Beat Generation" known for his novel "Naked Lunch," based on his experiences as a drug addict, died at the age of 83.
1999 - The "Awadh-Assam Express" train collided head-on with the "Brahmaputra Mail" in eastern India, resulting in the deaths of 285 people and injuring nearly 300.
2001 - Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic was sentenced to 46 years in prison for killing thousands of Muslims in the Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II. His sentence was later reduced to 35 years.
2004 - French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century, died at the age of 95.
2005 - Air France Flight 358 crashed off the runway at Toronto International Airport, with all passengers and crew safely escaping the wreckage and flames.
2007 - Russian explorers submerged in the Arctic Ocean raised their national flag on the seabed to symbolically claim energy resources in the Arctic.
2014 - A factory explosion in eastern China killed 68 people.
