Reuters
1929 - Share prices collapsed as nearly 13 million shares changed hands in panic selling on the New York Stock Exchange in what became known as "Black Thursday".
1931 - The American gangster boss Al Capone was sentenced to 11 years in jail for tax evasion.
1945 - The United Nations Charter, adopted at the San Francisco Conference in June 1945, formally came into force.
1957 - French fashion designer Christian Dior, responsible for the "New Look", died.
1989 - The U.S. television evangelist Jim Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in jail and fined $500,000 for swindling his followers.
2000 - U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ended a historic visit to Pyongyang after receiving a personal pledge from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to halt long-range missile tests.
2003 - Three Concorde airliners flew to London in a spectacular finale to the era of supersonic civilian air travel.
2004 - A Russian Soyuz capsule returned safely to earth carrying U.S. astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian Gennady Padalka, who had manned the International Space Station for almost 188 days. During their accident-prone mission, the crew had twice lost the station's orientation in space, and on one occasion mission control lost contact with them.
2004 - Arsenal Football Club loses to Manchester United, ending a Premier League record for 49 consecutive unbeaten matches.
2005 - Rosa Parks, who galvanised the U.S. civil rights movement, died at the age of 92. On Dec. 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to a white passenger. Parks' action sparked a bus boycott.
2007 - World's most premature living baby born in Miami.
