1587 - Virginia Dare, granddaughter of Governor John White of the Colony of Roanoke, Virginia, becomes the first child of English parents to be born in the Americas. Exactly three years later, White returns from a supply trip to England to find that everyone from the colony had disappeared.
1965 - Vietnam War: Operation Starlite begins - US marines destroy a Viet Cong stronghold on the Van Tuong peninsula in the major American ground battle of the war.
1976 - In the Korean Demilitarized Zone at Panmunjom, the axemurder incident results in the deaths of two US soldiers.
1977 – Steve Biko is arrested. His death a few weeks later, at the hands of the police, makes him a symbol of the brutality of South Africa's apartheid system.