manned orbital space flight, when his Aurora 7 craft splashed down after three trips around the earth.

1964 - More than 300 people died during a riot at a soccer match in Peru after the referee disallowed a goal.

1968 - In the continuing student and labor unrest in France, President Charles de Gaulle proposed a referendum and rioting students set fire to the Paris Stock Exchange.

1974 - Duke Ellington, U.S. jazz pianist, composer and bandleader, died.

1976 - The British and French Concordes made their first commercial flights from London and Paris, respectively, to Washington Dulles International Airport in just under four hours.

1977 - Soviet president Nikolai Podgorny was dropped from the ruling Politburo.

1981 - President Jaime Roldos Aguilera of Ecuador died in an air crash.

1982 - In the Iran-Iraq War, Iranian troops recaptured Khorramshahr after it had been occupied by Iraq for 20 months.

1993 - Eritrea achieved independence from Ethiopia after a 30-year civil war.

1994 - About 270 Muslims performing the annual Haj pilgrimage to Mecca were killed in a stampede.

1998 - Hong Kong's pro-democracy parties swept to victory in the first legislative election under Chinese rule.

1999 - South Australian police found 11 decomposing bodies in a disused bank vault and a backyard in the nation's worst serial killing.

2000 - Israel ended its 22-year occupation of South lebanon in a rushed evacuation after the collapse of its local militia the previous day.

2001 - Twenty-three people were killed and more than 300 injured when a Jerusalem wedding hall collapsed in the worst civil disaster of Israel's 53-year-old history.