1903 -- The first Pacific telegraph cable, between San Francisco and Manila, went into operation.

1904 -- Construction of the Panama Canal began.

1934 -- Marie Curie, Polish-French physicist and Nobel Prize winner, died.

1943 -- Wladyslaw Sikorski, Polish statesman and prime minister, was killed in an air crash. He led Poland's government in exile during World War II.

1946 -- Philippines gained independence from United States.

1976 -- Israel launched a commando raid on Entebbe airport in Uganda to rescue 102 hostages held by Arab and West German hijackers of an Air France plane.

1979 -- Ahmed Ben Bella was released after 14 years detention. Ben Bella, Algeria's first president, was overthrown in a 1965 coup and had been kept under arrest ever since.

1991 -- Former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze decided to leave the Communist Party.

1994 -- French President Francois Mitterrand became the first foreigner to address South Africa's post-apartheid parliament.

1997 -- The U.S. Pathfinder space probe landed on Mars.

2000 -- Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski, one of Poland's most celebrated writers and anti-Communists, died at 81.

2002 -- Greek police discovered the hideout of the elusive November 17 guerrilla group which had killed 23 people since 1975.

2003 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and Romanian President Ion Iliescu signed a post-Communist friendship treaty at the Kremlin, along with a separate declaration formally ending World War II differences.