1941 - Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, Australian poet widely credited as the author of the song "Waltzing Matilda", died.

1979 - Mehdi Bazargan, an opposition leader during the reign of the Shah, was appointed the first prime minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He resigned later in the year.

1983 - Klaus Barbie, sought as a Nazi war criminal, was imprisoned in Lyons, France, after being extradited from Bolivia.

1994 - A mortar bomb hit a Sarajevo Street market, killing 68 people.

1997 - Switzerland's three biggest banks said they had created a 100 million Swiss franc Holocaust memorial fund as a gesture of good will towards their critics.

1999 - South African president Nelson Mandela made his last state of the nation speech to Parliament before retiring in May that year.

1999 - Neville Bonner, the first aboriginal to sit in Australia's Parliament, died aged 76.