1918 -- Women in Britain voted for the first time in a general election and were allowed to stand as candidates.

1935 -- Thomas Masaryk resigned as Czechoslovakia's first president.

1959 -- Archbishop Makarios became the first president of the Republic of Cyprus.

1960 -- A Paris convention was signed creating the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

1962 -- The Mariner II space probe began sending back man's first information from another planet -- Venus.

1967 -- Scientists at Stanford University isolated nuclear DNA from a virus in a test tube.

1978 -- The UN General Assembly called for an oil embargo against South Africa.

1989 -- Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet physicist who shunned official honor to fight the Kremlin for human rights and political freedom, died aged 68.

1995 -- Leaders from former Yugoslavia signed a Bosnian peace treaty in Paris, ending Europe's worst conflict since World War II and opening the way for thousands of NATO troops to move into the shattered country.

2000 -- Cuban President Fidel Castro met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Havana.

2003 - Former Philippine Foreign Secretary Blas Ople, who backed dictator Ferdinand Marcos but later championed democracy after Marcos's overthrow in 1986, died.

2004 -- French President Jacques Chirac inaugurated the 343 meter (1,125 ft) high, 2.5 km (1.5 miles) long Millau viaduct, the world's highest bridge.