1776 - Thomas Paine published his pamphlet "Common Sense."
1840 - The penny post, whereby mail was delivered at a standard charge rather than paid for by the recipient, began in Britain.
1863 - Prime Minister Gladstone opened the first section of the London Underground Railway system, from Paddington to Farringdon Street.
1920 - The League of Nations ratified the Treaty of Versailles, officially ending World War I with Germany.
1920 - The League of Nations held its first meeting in Geneva.
1928 - The Soviet Union ordered the exile of Leon Trotsky.
1943 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt sailed from Miami, Florida, to Trinidad thus becoming the first American President to visit a foreign country during wartime.
1946 - The first meeting of the United Nations General Assembly took place with 51 nations represented.
1949 - Vinyl records were introduced by RCA (45 rpm) and Columbia (33.3 rpm).
1978 - The Soviet Union launched two cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz capsule for a redezvous with the Salyut VI space laboratory.
1984 - The United States and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations for the first time in more than a century.
1990 - Chinese Premier Li Peng ended martial law in Beijing after seven months. He said that crushing pro-democracy protests had saved China from "the abyss of misery."
2003 - North Korea announced that it was withdrawing from the global nuclear arms control treaty and that it had no plans to develop nuclear weapons.