1517 - Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Palace Church.
1860 - Juliette Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts, was born.
1926 - Magician Harry Houdini died of gangrene and peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix.
1941 - Mount Rushmore was completed after 14 years of work.
1952 - The U.S. detonated its first hydrogen bomb.
1959 - Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine from Fort Worth, TX, announced that he would never return to the U.S. He was in Moscow, Russia.
1968 - President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a halt to all U.S. bombing of North Vietnam.
1984 - Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated near her residence by two Sikh security guards. Her son, Rajiv, was sworn in as prime minister.
1993 - River Phoenix died at the age of 23 after collapsing outside The Viper Room in Hollywood.
1997 - Louise Woodward, British au pair, was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder in the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen. She was released after her sentence was reduced to manslaughter.
1998 - Iraq announced that it was halting all dealings with U.N. arms inspectors. The inspectors were investigating the country's weapons of mass destruction stemming from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
1999 - EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed off the coast of Massachusetts, killing all 217 people aboard.
1999 - Leaders from the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The event ended a centuries-old doctrinal dispute over the nature of faith and salvation.