1939 -- Maxim Litvinov was dismissed as foreign minister by Soviet leader Josef Stalin and replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov.

1965 -- Cambodia broke off diplomatic relations with the United States after an American weekly magazine carried an article felt to be derogatory to the royal family.

1968 -- In Paris, students clashed with police at the start of a month of riots and strikes leading to the eventual temporary closure of the Sorbonne University.

1971 -- Walter Ulbricht retired as head of the East German Communist Party and was succeeded by Erich Honecker.

1996 -- Liu Gang, one of the most prominent pro-democracy leaders to flee China, was granted permission to stay in the United States.

1998 -- A body unearthed on a Berlin building site over 20 years earlier was finally confirmed by DNA tests as that of Martin Bormann, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man.

1999 -- The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 11,000 points for the first time ever.

2001 -- A Yugoslav court delivered the UN Tribunal's Indictment for War Crimes to Slobodan Milosevic, held in custody in Belgrade, but he refused to accept the document. Yugoslavia later extradited him to stand trial in The Hague.

2002 -- Foreign ministers and representatives of 36 of the Council of Europe's 44 member states signed a document pledging the total abolition of the death penalty, even in times of war.

2002 -- At least 450 people drowned when the Bangladeshi ferry Salahuddin-2 sank.