On This Day in History

Soviet aircraft shot down a Swedish military plane carrying out signals-intelligence gathering operations, followed three days later by the shootdown of a second plane searching for the first one.

Preston Smith, Governor of Texas, signed a law converting a research arm of Texas Instruments into the University of Texas at Dallas.

"The Long and Winding Road" became the Beatles' twentieth and final number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The New York Times published the first excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page classified Department of Defense history of the United States' political and military involvement in the Vietnam War.

English teenager Marcus Sarjeant fired six blanks at Queen Elizabeth II as she rode down The Mall to the Trooping the Colour ceremony.

Pioneer 10 passed the orbit of Neptune, becoming the first man-made object to leave the proximity of the major planets of the Solar System.

Insurgents carried out a second bombing at the al-Askari Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam.

A 6.0 Mw earthquake (aftermath pictured) caused up to NZ$6 billion of additional damage to Christchurch, New Zealand, which was still recovering from an earthquake four months earlier.

Some of the closest advisors and collaborators of Czech prime minister Petr Nečas were arrested for corruption.