1620 Peregrine White was born aboard the Mayflower in Massachusetts Bay. White was the first child to be born of English parents in present-day New England.
1818 Simon Bolivar formally declared Venezuela independent of Spain.
1889 Astronomer, Edwin Hubble, was born. Hubble discovered and developed the concept of an expanding universe. In 1924, he proved the existence of galaxies other than our own.
1945 24 Nazi leaders went before an international war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany.
1962 The Cuban Missile Crisis ended. The Soviet Union removed its missiles and bombers from Cuba and the U.S. ended its blockade of the island.
1983 An estimated 100 million people watched the controversial ABC-TV movie "The Day After." The movie depicted the outbreak of nuclear war.
1990 Saddam Hussein ordered another 250,000 Iraqi troops into the country of Kuwait.
1990 The space shuttle Atlantis landed at Cape Canaveral, FL, after completing a secret military mission.
1993 The U.S. Senate passed both the Brady Bill and legislation implementing NAFTA.
1994 The Angolan government and rebels signed a treaty in Zambia to end 19 years of war.
1998 Afghanistan's Taliban militia offered Osama bin Laden safe haven. Osama bin Laden had been accused of orchestrating two U.S. embassy bombings in Africa and later terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.
1998 Forty-six states agreed to a $206 billion settlement of health claims against the tobacco industry. The industry also agreed to give up billboard advertising of cigarettes.
2001 The U.S. Justice Department headquarters building was renamed the Robert F. Kennedy building by President George W. Bush. The event was held on what would have been Kennedy's 76th birthday.