1862 – Hartley Colliery disaster: Two hundred and four men and boys killed in a mining disaster, prompted a change in UK law which henceforth required all collieries to have at least two independent means of escape.
1969 – Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 perform the first-ever docking of manned spacecraft in orbit, the first-ever transfer of crew from one space vehicle to another, and the only time such a transfer was accomplished with a space walk.
2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia takes off for mission STS-107 which would be its final one. Columbia disintegrated 16 days later on re-entry.
2005 – Romanian university lecturer and novelist Adriana Iliescu gives birth at 66 to her daughter Eliza, breaking the record for the oldest birth mother in the world
2013 – An estimated 41 international workers are taken hostage in an attack in the town of In Aménas, Algeria.
2016 – Thirty-three out of 126 freed hostages are injured and 23 killed in 2016 Ouagadougou attack in Burkina Faso. The attack was carried out on a hotel and a nearby restaurant in the capital.