1825 - Bolivia was proclaimed an independent republic after nearly 300 years of Spanish rule.

1890 - Convicted murderer William Kemmler became the first person to die in an electric chair at Auburn Prison, New York.

1896 - French Parliament voted for the annexation of Madagascar.

1914 - In World War I, Austria-Hungary declared war on Russia and Serbia declared war on Germany.

1915 - The Allies made fresh landings on Suvla Bay during the year-long ill-fated Gallipoli campaign; by the time it ended in January 1916 over 250,000 Allied troops had been killed or injured.

1916 - Dom Mintoff, Maltese politician, born. A firebrand prime minister, he led his country from 1971 and steered Malta away from its traditional links with Britain and Europe and closer to Libya and the Arab world.

1918 - The Marne offensive, the last major German attack of World War I, ended in failure with 100,000 Germans killed or injured.

1926 - U.S. swimmer Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel. The swim took just over 14 hours.

1940 - Estonia formally absorbed into the Soviet Union as the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic.

1945 - U.S. Air Force dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. It was carried by the B-29 bomber "Enola Gay". Five square miles (13sq.km) were reduced to ashes and at least 117,000 people were killed.

1962 - Jamaica became independent after 300 years of British rule.

1973 - Fulgencio Batista Y. Zaldivar, Cuban dictator from 1952-59, died. He fled Cuba after being toppled by Fidel Castro.

1990 - UN Security Council voted 13-0 to ban trade with Iraq except for medicine and some food for humanitarian relief after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

1996 - U.S. scientists revealed they had found evidence of ancient life on Mars in remnants of a meteorite discovered in Antarctica.