1664 - France and Brandenburg form alliance.

1836 - Alamo mission in San Antonio, Texas, falls to Mexican army after 13-day siege in which Davy Crockett and 186 other defenders die.

1922 - United States prohibits export of arms to China.

1933 - Poland occupies port of Danzig.

1945 - German city of Cologne falls to U.S. First Army in World War II.

1946 - France recognizes Vietnam as free state within Indochina Federation.

1953 - G.M. Malenkov succeeds the late Josef Stalin as Premier of Soviet Union.

1957 - The former British colonies of Gold Coast and Togoland form independent West African nation of Ghana; Israeli troops hand over Gaza Strip to U.N. force.

1962 - United States pledges to defend Thailand against direct Communist aggression without waiting for action by Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.

1965 - U.S. Defense Department announces that 3,500 Marines are being sent to South Vietnam — the first U.S. ground combat troops committed to fighting against Communist guerrillas.

1970 - Alexander Dubcek, former Czech Communist Party boss, is suspended from party.

1971 - South Vietnamese report capture of key Communist supply hub in Sepone (Techepone) on Ho Chi Minh Trail in southern Laos.

1975 - Arab terrorist raid on a Tel Aviv hotel leaves 14 dead.

1988 - Thousands of Tibetans demanding independence set fires throughout their capital city of Lhasa.

1989 - At least 109 people, most of them laborers, die after drinking homemade liquor in India's western city of Baroda.

1990 - Afghan defense minister Shahnawaz Tanai leads unsuccessful coup attempt against government of Najibullah.

1991 - Iraqi troops appear to have crushed a rebellion in Basra and are reported to be moving on other southern cities in revolt.

1993 - UNITA rebels capture Angola's second largest city, Huambo, after a two-month battle with government troops.

1994 - Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid rejects a peace agreement reached by 12 other faction leaders in Cairo.

1995 - The dollar plummets to 92.70 yen, its lowest level against the yen anywhere in the world since modern exchange rates were established in the late 1940s.

1996 - Thousands of jubilant Muslims and Croats pour into Hadzici, a Sarajevo suburb in Bosnia, as Serbs give it up.

1997 - Tamil Tiger rebels break a two-month lull in Sri Lanka's civil war by raiding an army base and an air field in coordinated, pre-dawn attacks that leave 213 people dead.

1998 - The U.S. House of Representatives votes to let Puerto Rico decide in a referendum if it wants to remain a territory or become an independent nation or U.S. state.

1999 - Ta Mok, the last leader of the murderous Khmer Rouge, is captured by the Cambodian army and flown to the capital for trial.