1918 - The First World War ended at 11 a.m; the armistice was signed in a railway carriage at Compiegne, France, bringing to a close a conflict in which more than 10 million people died.

1918 - The independent republic of Poland was proclaimed by Jozef Pilsudski.

1920 - The body of an unknown British soldier was buried in Westminster Abbey. The service was recorded using the first electronic recording process developed by Lionel Guest and H.O. Merriman.

1925 - It was announced that American physicist Robert Andrews Millikan had discovered the cosmic ray.

1942 - German troops entered unoccupied France, taking control of Limoges and Vichy, and reached the frontier with Spain. Corsica was occupied by German and Italian troops.

1952 - The first video recorder was demonstrated by inventors John Mullin and Wayne Johnson in Beverly Hills, California.

1961 - The Soviet city of Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd.

1965 - Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith announced a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain, which promptly declared the regime illegal and introduced trade restrictions.

1975 - Angola became independent from Portugal after 500 years of colonial rule.

1987 - Vincent Van Gogh's painting "Irises" was sold for a then record $53.9 million in New York.

1992 - Overturning centuries of tradition, the Church of England voted to allow women to become priests.

1995 - The European Union's 15 member states decided to pull their envoys out of Lagos to show their anger at Nigeria's execution of human rights leaders.

1998 - Japan's Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi arrived in Moscow for the first official visit to Russia by a Japanese leader in 25 years.

1999 - British hereditary lords ended 700 years in parliament when they passed legislation stripping away their right to sit in the House of Lords.

2001 - The World Trade Organization approved Taiwan's entry, a day after welcoming China into the global trade club.

2004 - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, the guerrilla icon turned Nobel Peace Prize winner who ended up in renewed conflict with Israel, died. He was 75.

2005 - Briton Patrick Lichfield, whose dashing looks, royal pedigree and artistic talent made him one of the fashion world's best-known photographers, died aged 66. 2005 - Syrian-born Hollywood producer Moustapha Akkad died two days after being wounded in a suicide bomb attack on the hotel in which he was staying in Jordan. He was best known for producing the series of "Halloween" horror films