William James Hardham was a New Zealand soldier who was a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry "in the face of the enemy" that could be awarded at the time to military personnel of the British Empire.
The largest power outage in history occurred across 22 Indian states, affecting more than 620 million people, or about 9 percent of the world's population.
Soviet Special Purpose Police Unit troops killed seven Lithuanian customs officials in Medininkai in the most serious attack of their campaign against Lithuanian border posts.
The Troubles: In a botched paramilitary attack, three members of the popular Miami Showband and two Ulster Volunteer Force gunmen were killed in County Down, Northern Ireland.
The Troubles: Hours after the British Army's Operation Motorman brought an end to the self-declared autonomous area of Free Derry (Free Derry Corner pictured) in Northern Ireland, three car bombs exploded in the village of Claudy.
The space probe Ranger 7 captured thousands of close-up photographs of the Moon over its final minutes of flight and transmitted them to Earth before crashing on the lunar surface.
The Holocaust: Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring authorised SS officer Reinhard Heydrich to handle preparations for the "Final Solution of the Jewish question".
First World War: The Battle of Passchendaele began near Ypres, Belgium, with the Allies aiming to force German troops to withdraw from the Channel Ports.
Patrick Francis Healy was inaugurated as president of Georgetown University, becoming the first African-American president of a predominantly white university in the United States.
The Second Continental Congress passed a resolution commissioning the Marquis de Lafayette (pictured) as a major general in the American revolutionary forces.