1961 The animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians was released in the United States, and it became a Disney classic, especially noted for the villainous character Cruella De Vil.

1950 India became a republic, achieving full independence from Great Britain.

1967 During a simulation of a launch, U.S. astronauts Virgil I. Grissom, Edward H. White, and Roger B. Chaffee perished in a fire aboard Apollo 1.

1958 Godtfred Kirk Christiansen, whose father founded the company LEGO in Denmark, filed for a Danish patent (later granted) for a toy building block that became hugely popular around the world.

1964 The British film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a landmark Cold War farce directed by Stanley Kubrick, was released in theatres.

1965: Last farewell to Churchill
Thousands of people pay their last respects to Britain's greatest wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill who is buried today after a full state funeral.

1606 Guy Fawkes executed in London
On this day in 1606, British provocateur Guy Fawkes—one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, who sought to blow up Parliament and to assassinate King James I for his repression of Roman Catholics—was executed in London.