1543 - Bartoleme Ferrelo returned to Spain after discovering San Francisco Bay in the New World.
1775 - The first abolitionist society in U.S. was organized in Philadelphia with Ben Franklin as president.
1793 - A royalist rebellion in Santo Domingo was crushed by French republican troops.
1912 - The Atlantic passenger liner Titanic, on its maiden voyage hit an iceberg and began to sink. 1,517 people lost their lives and more than 700 survived.
1931 - King Alfonso XIII of Spain went into exile and the Spanish Republic was proclaimed.
1946 - The civil war between Communists and nationalist resumed in China.
1987 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proposed banning all missiles from Europe.
1999 - Pakistan test-fired a ballistic missile that was capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching its rival neighbor India.