- 1793 – Marie Antoinette is guillotined at the height of the French Revolution.
- 1847 – The novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is published.
- 1859 – Abolitionist John Brown leads a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
- 1875 – Brigham Young University is founded.
- 1916 – The nation’s first birth control clinic was opened in New York by Margaret Sanger and two other women. Officials shut down the clinic 10 days later.
- 1923 – The Walt Disney Company is founded.
- 1946 – At Nuremberg, Germany, 10 high-ranking Nazi officials were executed by hanging for crimes committed during World War II.
- 1968 – American track and field athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos were kicked off the US Olympic team for participating in a Black Power salute during the Mexico City games.
- 1972 – A small plane carrying U.S. House Democratic leader Hale Boggs of Louisiana, fellow Democratic Rep. Nick Begich of Alaska and two others was reported missing on a flight from Anchorage to Juneau in Alaska. The plane was never found.
- 1973 – North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho and U.S. national security adviser Henry Kissinger were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their Paris negotiations that led to a Vietnam War cease-fire agreement. Le Duc Tho refused to accept the award.
- 1978 – Karol Jozef Wojtyla was elected pope and took the name John Paul II. He was the first non-Italian pontiff since 1523.
- 1987 – 18-month-old Jessica McClure was rescued from an abandoned well in Texas, 58 hours after she first fell into it.
