1922 -- Mahatma Gandhi, Indian nationalist leader, was arrested by the British government of India, tried for sedition and sentenced to six years imprisonment.

1944 -- Irvin S. Cobb, U.S. journalist and humorist, died.

1945 -- Three hundred U.S. B-29 bombers devastated Japan's capital in what became known as the Great Tokyo Air Raid. The resulting firestorm killed 100,000 people.

1948 -- Jan Masaryk, Czech statesman and foreign minister, killed himself by jumping from a window at the foreign office in Prague.

1952 -- Fulgencio Batista, a former Cuban president, overthrew the government and ruled as dictator until 1959 when Fidel Castro took power.

1969 -- James Earl Ray was sentenced in Memphis, Tennessee, to 99 years in prison for the murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968.

1985 -- Konstantin Chernenko, Soviet leader, died after only 13 months in office.

1990 -- Farzad Bazoft, British journalist, was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court for alleged espionage. He was executed on March 15.

1990 -- Jennifer Capriati, U.S. tennis player, became the youngest semifinalist in grand slam history at 13 years and 11 months, after reaching the final four at the French open.

1993 -- President Suharto, Indonesia's ruler for the past 27 years, was re-elected to a sixth five-year term.

1999 -- A French court sentenced six Libyans, including Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's brother-in-law, to life for the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over Africa.

2000 -- A Turkish court sentenced former Islamist prime minister Necmettin Erbakan to a year in jail for "provoking hatred" in a 1994 speech. 2002 -- Israel retaliated for a Palestinian suicide bombing in a Bait-ul-Moqaddas cafe that killed 13 by destroying the Gaza headquarters that Yasser Arafat used as showcase for Palestinian sovereignty.