1999
NASA lost contact with the Mars Polar Lander as it arrived at Mars. It was presumed to have crashed
1999
Death of Madeline Kahn, award-winning American stage and film actress (Blazing saddles, Paper Moon, and other roles)
1993
Princess Diana announced that she was withdrawing from public life .
1989
US President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced the end of the Cold War at a meeting in Malta
1988
Junior health minister Edwina Currie said that most eggs produced in Britain were infected with salmonella. Egg sales fell by 60% overnight,.
1984
A poisonous gas leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India killed thousands of people and left 120,000 with long-term health problems
India
1979
Eleven people were killed in a crush of fans at a rock concert in Cincinnati, Ohio, where British rock band The Who were performing
1967
First human heart transplant (in South Africa by Christiaan Barnard)
1926
Agatha Christie vanishes
1857
Joseph Conrad, born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski 1857 (died 1924), the son of Polish patriots. After taking to the sea at 16, he qualified as a master mariner, before turning to a literary career when posts in sailing ships became rarer. The Nigger of
1803
Birth of the Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, parish priest and the writer of The Song of Western Men, better known as Trelawny and the unofficial national anthem of Cornwall.
Great Britain