1904 -- In the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian fleet took heavy losses when the Japanese blocked its escape from Port Arthur in the Battle of the Yellow Sea.

1913 -- The Treaty of Bucharest was signed between Bulgaria and the Balkan allies Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Romania, ending the second Balkan war.

1920 -- After World War I, Turkey and the Allied powers signed the Treaty of Sevres, relieving Turkey of much of the land ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

1944 -- In World War II, U.S. forces overran Pati Point after three weeks of fighting and recaptured Guam from the Japanese.

1964 -- Pope Paul VI issued his first encyclical, "Ecclesiam Suam", which stated his willingness to mediate in international disputes.

1966 -- U.S. space authorities launched Orbiter 1 from Cape Kennedy. The first craft to transmit lunar photographs of possible landing sights, it crashed into the far side of the moon on October 29.

1984 -- U.S. runner Mary Decker crashed out of the 3,000 meters final at the Los Angeles Olympics after a collision with Britain's Zola Budd. Budd was initially disqualified but later reinstated.

2000 -- A Polish court ruled that President Aleksander Kwasniewski had not been an informant of the communist-era security service, heading off a possible political crisis.

2001 -- Up to 252 people were killed when a passenger train was attacked by UNITA rebels south of Luanda, one of the bloodiest incidents in Angola's long-running civil war.

2001 -- Benin's army chief of staff Colonel Jean N'Pina and four other military personnel were killed when their helicopter exploded in mid-air near Kokoro north of Cotonou.

2003 -- The first wedding in space took place between Yuri Malenchenko, commander of the International Space Station and his fiance Ekaterina Dmitriev.

2004 -- Libya agreed to pay $35 million compensation to more than 160 non-U.S. victims of the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin nightclub.

2005 -- Guinea-Bissau's electoral body declared former army ruler Joao Bernardo Vieira the winner of a disputed presidential election.