1966 The first episode of the sci-fi series Star Trek aired on American television.

1993 The TV series The X-Files, starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, debuted on Fox, and it developed a huge cult following.

2008 A major fire erupted in the Channel Tunnel, which runs under the English Channel and connects England with France, and the Chunnel (as it was sometimes called) did not resume full service until early the following year.

2003: Johnny Cash dies
One of the great legends of country music, Johnny Cash, dies after a short illness.

1980: Missing Scottish bear is found
The bear who went missing on a Scottish island while being filmed for a television commercial is recaptured.

1985: USSR expels 25 in tit-for-tat spy row
Moscow retaliates two days after Britain expels 25 Soviet spies following the defection of KGB chief Oleg Gordievsky.

1964: The Sun newspaper is born
The Sun newspaper is published today for the first time. It is replacing the Daily Herald.

1975 Papua New Guinea achieved full independence from Australia.

1991 North Korea and South Korea were admitted to the United Nations.

2014 Scottish voters rejected a referendum that would have made Scotland an independent country.

1783 The Montgolfier brothers sent aloft a balloon with a rooster, a duck, and a sheep aboard, rapidly advancing French aeronautics.

Rome incorporated into Italy
On this day in 1870, Italian troops occupied Rome, leading to the eventual incorporation of Rome into the Kingdom of Italy and the limiting of papal governing authority to the Vatican itself and a small district around it.

2013 Al-Shabaab militants launched a terrorist attack on the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi, which ended three days later and left more than 65 people dead, including Ghanian poet and novelist Kofi Awoonor.

Neptune observed
This day in 1846, astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle became the first person ever to observe the planet Neptune, the existence of which had been mathematically predicted by Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier and John Couch Adams.

1960 The first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Enterprise, was launched by the United States.