1849 - The Governor General of Canada, Lord Elgin, signs the Rebellion Losses Bill, outraging Montreal's English population and triggering the Montreal Riots.

1859 - British and French engineers broke ground for the Suez Canal.

1945 - Nazi occupation army leaves Northern Italy after a general partisan insurrection by the Italian resistance movement. This day is taken as symbol of Liberation of Italy.

1945 - Fifty nations gather in San Francisco, California to begin the United Nations Conference on International Organizations.

1953 - Francis Crick and James D Watson publish Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid describing the double helix structure of DNA.

1966 - Tashkent city was destroyed by a huge earthquake.

1974 - Carnation Revolution: A leftist military coup in Portugal restores democracy after more than forty years as a corporate fascist state.