1844 - Marie-Bernard Soubirous, Saint Bernadette Lourdes, born; she claimed have seen visions of the Virgin. Mary at a spring near her home and a shrine was later established there.

1895 - Korea proclaimed its independence from China.

1904 - The shipping distress call CQD -- "Seek You, Danger" -- was introduced. It was replaced by SOS two years later.

1927 - A transatlantic telephone service between London and New York was introduced.

1932 - Andre Maginot, French statesman, died. The French line of fortification against Germany constructed in the 1930s was named after him.

1937 - Princess (later queen) Juliana of the Netherlands married Prince Bernhard.

1975 - OPEC agreed to raise the price of crude 10 percent.

1979 - Vietnamese forces, aided by Cambodian insurgents, captured Phnom Penh after a two-week invasion and overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime of PoI Pot.

1984 - French scientist Alfred Kastler died; he won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1966 for his work which was instrumental in the development of lasers.

1989 - Emperor Hirohito of Japan died after a 63-year reign.

1990 - The leaning tower of Pisa, officially listed a public danger to the anger of locals, was closed to tourists for the first time in its 800-year history for restoration work.

1992 - Five European Community monitors in Croatia died when their helicopter was shot down.

1994 - South Africa's Zulubased lnkatha Freedom Party said it would not participate in the country's first all-race elections in April.

1998 - Spanish police foiled a suspected mass suicide planned by 32 members of a sect who believed their souls would be carried away by a spaceship from the summit of Tenerife's Teide Volcano.