1916 - The Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death for conspiracy with Germany.

1941 - Ignace Jan Paderewski, Polish concert pianist and statesman, died in Switzerland. He campaigned abroad on behalf of Poland and was briefly prime minister in 1919.

1972 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was contrary to the Constitution.

1974 - Isabel Peron was sworn in as president of Argentina, taking over from her husband Juan Peron who had become ill.

1980 - Vigdis Finnbogadottir was elected Iceland's president, becoming Europe's first democratically elected female head of state.

1991 - The former East Bloc's trade and economic arm, Comecon, was dissolved.

1992 - Algerian head of state Mohamed Boudiaf was assassinated as he opened a cultural center in the eastern Algerian town of Annaba.

1992 - The United Nations flag was raised over Sarajevo Airport after Serbian Forces ended their two-month siege.

1995 - A department store in Seoul collapsed, killing 502 people, in South Korea's worst peacetime disaster.

1999 - The Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan was sentenced by a Turkish court to hang for treason.

2000 - A first printing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence fetched $8.14 million in a Sotheby's online auction, breaking the record for any sale on the Internet.

2001 - Yugoslav prime minister Zoran Zizic resigned, triggering the fall of the federal government over the transfer of Slobodan Milosevic to the War Crimes Court in The Hague.