*1660* The first Shakespearian actress to appear on an English stage (she is believed to be a Ms. Norris) makes her debut as Desdemona.
*1861* CSS Sumter captures the whaler
Eben Dodge in the Atlantic. The American Civil War is now affecting the Northern whaling industry.
*1863* Union General William Averell's cavalry destroys railroads in the southwestern part of West Virginia.
*1914* The German cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Nurnberg, and Liepzig are sunk by a British force in the Battle of the Falkland Islands.
*1920* President Woodrow Wilson declines to send a representative to the League of Nations in Geneva.
*1932* Japan tells the League of Nations that it has no control over her designs in China.
*1941* Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita begins his attack against the British army at Singapore.
*1943* U.S. carrier-based planes sink two cruisers and down 72 planes in the Marshall Islands.
*1944* The United States conducts the longest, most effective air raid on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima.
*1948* *The United Nations approves the recognition of South Korea.*
*1967* In the biggest battle yet in the Mekong Delta, 365 Viet Cong are killed.
*1968* South Vietnam's Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky arrives in Paris for peace talks.
*1980* John Lennon is shot to death outside his Manhattan apartment building.
*1982* The Washington, D.C., police shoot and kill a man threatening to blow up the Washington Monument.
*1987* The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed.
*1987* An Israeli army tank transporter kills 4 Palestinian refugees and injures 7 others during a traffic accident at the Erez Crossing on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, leading to the First *Intifada* .
*1991* The leaders of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine sign an agreement that dissolves the Soviet Union and establishes the Commonwealth of Independent States.
*2004* The Cuzco Declaration signed in Cuzco, Peru, establishing the South American Community of Nations.
*2010* SpaceX becomes the first privately held company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a spacecraft.
*2010* The Japanese solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS passes the