The first operation of Qinghai–Tibet Railway is conducted in China.
China resumes sovereignty over the city-state of Hong Kong, ending 156 years of British colonial rule. The handover ceremony is attended by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Charles, Prince of Wales, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and U.S. Secretary...
The Finnish operator Radiolinja is launched as the world's first GSM network.
The American radio station WFAN in New York City is launched as the world's first all-sports radio station.
The first Gay pride march in England takes place.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is signed in Washington, D.C., London and Moscow by sixty-two countries.
Merger Treaty: The European Community is formally created out of a merger between the Common Market, the European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Atomic Energy Commission.
The first color television transmission in Canada takes place from Toronto.
The British Government admits that former diplomat Kim Philby had worked as a Soviet agent.
The Trust Territory of Somaliland (the former Italian Somaliland) gains its independence from Italy. Concurrently, it unites as scheduled with the five-day-old State of Somaliland (the former British Somaliland) to form the Somali Republic.
Ghana becomes a republic and Kwame Nkrumah becomes its first President as Queen Elizabeth II ceases to be its head of state.
The merger of two princely states of India, Cochin and Travancore, into the state of Thiru-Kochi (later re-organized as Kerala) in the Indian Union ends more than 1,000 years of princely rule by the Cochin royal family.
Crossroads Able is the first postwar nuclear weapon test.
World War II: start of the First Battle of El Alamein.
Wiley Post and Harold Gatty become the first people to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engined monoplane aircraft.
The National War Memorial for the Dominion of Newfoundland was inaugurated by Field Marshall Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig in St. John's, Newfoundland. The date commemorates the first day of the Battle of the Somme, where at Beaumont-Hamel, 86 percent...
The Chinese Communist Party is founded by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, with the help of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), who seized power in Russia after the 1917 October Revolution, and the Far Eastern...
World War I: Russia launches an offensive against Austria-Hungary to capture Galicia, its final offensive of the war.
World War I: First day on the Somme: On the first day of the Battle of the Somme 19,000 soldiers of the British Army are killed and 40,000 wounded.