On this day in 1970, renowned Japanese novelist Mishima Yukio and four members of his Shield Society, a private army formed to preserve Japan's martial spirit, seized control of a military headquarters near downtown Tokyo.
| 2002: | | | In London the Agatha Christie play The Mousetrap celebrated its 50th anniversary with a royal gala, having opened on November 25, 1952, and this performance being its 20,807th. |
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| 1975: | | Suriname gained its independence from The Netherlands. |
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| 1942: | | Leslie Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer chose Los Alamos, New Mexico, as the site of Project Y, which developed the first atomic bomb. |
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| 1936: | | Germany and Japan formed the Anti-Comintern Pact against the Soviet Union. |
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| 1863: | | | General Ulysses S. Grant defeated General Braxton Bragg's Confederate forces at Lookout Mountain during the American Civil War. |
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| 1846: | | | American temperance advocate Carry Nation, famous for using a hatchet to demolish barrooms, was born. |
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| 1277: | | Nicholas III was elected pope of the Roman Catholic church. |
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| 1120: | | William the Aetheling, duke of Normandy, was killed in a shipwreck on his way to England. |
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