In 1888, the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., was opened to the public.
In 1934, King Alexander of Yugoslavia was assassinated by a Croatian terrorist during a state visit to France.
In 1974, Oskar Schindler, the German businessman credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, died at the age of 66.
In 1975, Andrei Sakharov, father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, became the first Soviet citizen to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 1983, James Watt, facing U.S. Senate condemnation for a racially insensitive remark, resigned as U.S. President Ronald Reagan's interior secretary.
In 1992, NASA announced that the unmanned Pioneer spacecraft was apparently lost after orbiting Venus for 14 years.
In 1997, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned after Communist members of Parliament withdrew their support for his coalition government. (Prodi was also PM from May 2006 until January 2008.)
In 2002, as stock prices continued to fluctuate wildly, the Dow Jones industrials closed at 7,286.27, a five-year low.
In 2004, John Howard won a fourth term as Australian prime minister.
In 2006, the U.N. Security Council approved South Korean Foreign Secretary Ban Ki-moon as the next U.N. secretary-general to succeed Kofi Annan.
In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
In 2012, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report said Transportation Security Administration screeners routinely failed to check bags for explosives at Honolulu International Airport. It said inspectors found "a lack of effective and consistent supervision of TSA screeners by their managers, as well as inconsistent adherence to operating procedures."
In 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Janet L. Yellen to lead the Federal Reserve System. (She officially became Fed chairwoman in early 2014.)
A thought for the day: "Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything." -- George Bernard Shaw
