1904 -- Sir Henry Morton Stanley, British-born journalist and African explorer, died. He was famous for finding the Scottish missionary explorer David Livingstone in 1871.

1925 -- William Ferguson Massey, New Zealand statesman and prime minister (1912-25), died in office.

1933 -- Nazis, nationalist students and professors in black robes gathered on a square in central Berlin to burn books by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Bertolt Brecht and other authors condemned by Adolf Hitler's followers as "un-German".

1940 -- Winston Churchill took over as British prime minister following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain.

1940 -- Germany invaded Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Belgium.

1941 -- Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, flew from Augsburg and parachuted down near Glasgow, Scotland, in an apparent attempt to negotiate a peace deal. He was arrested and imprisoned.

1960 -- The U.S. nuclear-powered submarine Triton completed an 84-day, 41,000-mile submerged voyage around the world.

1963 -- Pope John XXIII received the Balzan Peace Prize, the first peace prize ever awarded to a pope.

1981 -- In West Germany, the Social Democrats lost elections in West Berlin for the first time since World War II.

1993 -- Over 200 workers were killed when a fire destroyed a Thai toy factory in Nakhon Pathom province.

1994 -- Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa's first black president.

1994 -- Media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi took office as Italy's prime minister at the head of a government that brought neo-fascists to power for the first time since 1945.

1995 -- Britain lifted a 23-year ban on ministerial talks with Sinn Fein, the political ally of the Irish Republican Army guerrillas in Northern Ireland.

1997 -- 1,560 people were killed and 2,810 injured when an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale rocked rural areas of eastern Iran.

1999 -- Brazil formally granted political asylum to Paraguay's disgraced former president Raul Cubas and his family.

2002 -- A federal judge sentenced former FBI agent Robert Hanssen, considered one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history, to life in prison for selling secrets to Moscow.

2002 -- Yves Robert, French actor-director, died. He was 81.

2004 -- Biotech crop pioneer Monsanto Co. suspended plans to introduce what would be the world's first biotech wheat, bowing to a storm of protest over genetically modified crops.

2005 -- Germany unveiled a new memorial in Berlin for the six million victims of Nazi terror.