Reuters
1904 - Theodor Herzl, Hungarian-born Zionist leader, died. In 1897 he became first president of the World Zionist Organisation.
1928 - John Logie Baird transmitted the world's first colour television pictures in London.
1940 - British ships destroyed the French fleet at Oran and Mers-el-Kebir in Algeria to prevent them falling into enemy hands. Over 1,000 French sailors died.
1962 - President de Gaulle of France declared Algeria independent.
1971 - Jim Morrison, lead singer with the American rock group The Doors, died in Paris.
1987 - In France, Klaus Barbie, the Nazi "butcher of Lyon", was jailed for life for wartime crimes against humanity.
1988 - The American warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus A300 over the Gulf in the last weeks of the Iran-Iraq war, killing all 290 aboard.
1996 - Stone of scone is returned to Scotland.
2000 - Mexican opposition candidate Vicente Fox beat Francisco Labastida of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), ending the PRI's 71-year rule in a presidential ballot.
2004 - The Cassini spacecraft pierced the haze enveloping Titan, Saturn's largest moon, to reveal surface details that shattered theories about its composition.
2013 - Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi is overthrown by military.
