1924 -- Novelist Franz Kafka died. His works The Trial and Metamorphosis exerted a huge influence on modern writers.

1937 -- The duke of Windsor, the former Edward VIII, married Wallis Simpson in France, less than six months after giving up the British throne for the woman he loved.

1940 -- The evacuation of Allied troops from the French port of Dunkirk was completed in World War II; over 335,000 British, French and Belgian troops were rescued.

1944 -- Generals Henri Giraud and Charles de Gaulle reached agreement on setting up the French Committee of National Liberation under their joint presidency.

1950 -- Maurice Herzog, leading a French expedition, scaled The Himalayan peak of Annapurna in Nepal for the first time.

1963 -- Pope John XXIII, who ushered in significant reforms to the Roman Catholic Church, died.

1965 -- Major Edward White became the first U.S. astronaut to walk in space when he stepped outside his Gemini 4 spacecraft.

1973 -- A Soviet Tupolev 144 crashed at the Paris air show, killing 15. The supersonic airliner was dubbed "Concordski" because it closely resembled the Anglo-French Concorde.

1989 -- Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spiritual leader of Iran, died aged 86.

1989 -- Gas from a leaking pipeline exploded, engulfing two packed passenger trains on the Trans-Siberian Railway; 575 people were killed and over 600 injured.

1995 -- Defense ministers from NATO and European Union countries agreed to set up a "Rapid Reaction Force" to protect embattled UN peacekeeping troops from Bosnian Serb attack.

1998 -- An express train derailed near the town of Celle in northern Germany, killing 100.

1999 -- Nigeria's new National Assembly opened, ending more than 15 years of law-making by military decree.

2002 -- At a ceremony marking the 40th anniversary of Samoa's independence from New Zealand, Prime Minister Helen Clark apologized to the Samoans for brutality early last century under her country's rule that cost thousands lives. 2002 -- Lew Wasserman, movie mogul often described as the most powerful man in Hollywood, died. He was 89.