1580 Francis Drake completes circumnavigation of the world, sailing into Plymouth aboard the 'Golden Hind'
1665 Height of the Great Plague of London as 7,165 people die throughout the previous week.
1918 Beginning of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, more than 1 million American soldiers in the largest and most costly offensive of WWI
1925 Italian sub "Sebastiano Veniero" lost off Sicily with 54 dead.
1934 British ocean liner RMS Queen Mary is launched; "wins" Blue Riband for fastest passenger crossing of Atlantic, 1936 & 1938-52; retired in 1967, permanently moored and converted to a hotel in Long Beach, California.
1940 Luftwaffe bombs Spitfire factory in Woolston, Southampton for second time, 30 killed.
1973 Concorde makes its first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic (Washington, D.C. to Paris) in record-breaking time (3h33m).
1983 Soviet military officer Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov averts a worldwide nuclear war by judging supposed missile attack from the US an error.
1984 Britain & China initial agreement return Hong Kong to China in 1997
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