2001 - Veteran actor Jack Lemmon, whose roles ranged from brash or befuddled young men to grumpy old ones and who formed one of cinema’s great odd couples with late partner Walter Matthau, has died at age 76. Lemmon, a two-time Oscar winner and an Emmy winner for Tuesdays with Morrie, died at the University of Southern California’s Norris Cancer Centre with his wife, former actress Felicia Farr, and his son and daughter at his side, his longtime spokesman Warren Cowan said. He said that Lemmon, whose ability to play both comic and serious roles as a sort of American Everyman, died of complications from cancer. The Harvard-educated son of a baker, Lemmon dreamed of becoming an actor during a sickly boyhood.
Other important events
1797 - France occupies the Ionian Islands of Greece.
1812 - Napoleon Bonaparte’s army crosses Vilna River as Russian forces retreat.
1846 - The saxophone is patented by Adolphe Sax in Paris, France.
1881 - Immigration Act of New Zealand restricts Japanese immigration.
1895 - El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua form the Greater Republic of Central America.
1914 - Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated at Sarajevo, igniting the First World War.
1919 - Treaty of Versailles ending the First World War is signed in France.
1939 - Pan American Airways launches the first transatlantic passenger service.
1950 - North Korean soldiers capture Seoul, as South Koreans retreat south of Han River.
1964 - Malcolm X forms the Organisation for Afro-American Unity.
1981 - A powerful bomb explodes in Tehran, killing 73 officials of the Islamic Republican Party.
1996 - Turkey’s president Suleyman Demirel approves the country’s first Islamic-led government in 73 years.
1996 - Shaikh Khalifa Bin Saeed Al Maktoum dies at the age of 80.
1997 - Cuban and Argentine forensic experts uncover the remains of legendary guerrilla leader Ernesto Che Guevara and five of his companions near the Bolivian town of Vallegrande.
1998 - Slavko Dokmanovic, Serb former mayor of Vukovar, Croatia, hangs himself in his cell.
1999 - Computer hackers deface the US Army’s main website after hacking into the White House, FBI and US Senate websites.
2001 - Yugoslavia hands over Slobodan Milosevic to the United Nations war crimes tribunal.
2004 - US hands over sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government.
2005 - France to host world’s first fusion reactor.
2008 - Zimbabweans deface ballots and boycott the discredited re-election of President Robert Mugabe.
2010 - Turkey closes its airspace to some Israeli military flights, following a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship
2011 - Christine Lagarde becomes the first woman to head the International Monetary Fund.
