On this day in 1666 the Great Fire of London began accidentally in the house of the king's baker; it burned for four days and destroyed a large part of the city, including Old St. Paul's Cathedral and about 13,000 houses.

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1945: World War II came to an end as Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru and General Umezu Yoshijiro signed Japan's formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri.

1945: Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent from France.

1898: Anglo-Egyptian forces under Major General Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener (later Lord Kitchener) defeated the Sudanese forces of the Mahdist leader 'Abd Allh in the Battle of Omdurman.

1792: The September Massacres—mass killings of prisoners in Paris—began. The massacres were instigated by beliefs that political prisoners during the French Revolution were going to rise up in their jails to join a counterrevolutionary plot.

31 : Octavian (later Augustus Caesar) won a decisive victory over Mark Antony in the Battle of Actium.

Jimmy Connors

American tennis star Jimmy Connors, born this day in 1952, captured the U.S. Open title five times and in 1974 won three grand slam events (U.S., Australian, and Wimbledon) but was barred from competing in the French Open.

The lethal combination of German blitzkrieg tactics, French inactivity, and Russian perfidy doomed Poland to swift defeat this day in 1939, when Adolf Hitler invaded the country and sparked World War II.

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1985: The wreck of the Titanic was found on the ocean floor at a depth of about 13,000 feet (4,000 metres).

1969: A group of young army officers led by Muammar al-Qaddafi deposed the king and made Libya a republic.

1951: Australia, New Zealand, and the United States signed the ANZUS Pact.

1930: The Young Plan, the second renegotiation of Germany's World War I reparation payments, went into effect.

1923: A great earthquake struck the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area; the death toll from the shock was estimated at 142,800.

1914: The last known passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati (Ohio) Zoo.

1870: The French army suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle of Sedan in the Franco-German War.

1864: The Charlottetown Conference, the first of a series of meetings that ultimately led to the formation of the Dominion of Canada, convened at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

Joaquín Balaguer

Lawyer, writer, and diplomat Joaquín Balaguer, born in the Dominican Republic this day in 1907, served as Hector Trujillo's vice president (1957–60) and subsequently as president of the country (1960–62; 1966–78; 1986–96).