1945 - World War II: General Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender terms at Reims, France, ending Germany's participation in the war. The document will take effect the next day.
1946 - Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering (later renamed Sony) is founded with about 20 employees.
1952 - The concept for the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey W.A. Dummer.
1992 - space shuttle Endeavour launches on its maiden voyage.
1992 - 3 employees at a McDonald's Restaurant in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada are brutally murdered and a fourth permanently disabled after a botched robbery. It is the first fast-food murder in Canada to date.
1999 - A jury finds The Jenny Jones Show and Warner Bros liable in the shooting death of Scott Amedure after the show purposely deceived Jonathan Schmitz to appear on a secret same-sex crush episode. Shmitz later killed Amedure and the jury awarded Amedure's family US$25 million.
1999 - Kosovo War: In Yugoslavia, three Chinese embassy workers are killed and 20 wounded when a NATO aircraft mistakenly bombs the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
1999 - In Guinea-Bissau, President João Bernardo Vieira is ousted in a military coup.