On July 29, 1981, Britain's Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in a resplendent ceremony at St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
In 1914, transcontinental telephone service began with the first test phone conversation between New York and San Francisco.
In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which created NASA.
In 1967, an accidental rocket launch aboard the supercarrier USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin resulted in a fire and explosions that killed 134 servicemen. (One survivor was Navy Lt. Cmdr. John McCain, now a U.S. senator.)
In 1997, members of Congress from both parties embraced compromise legislation designed to balance the budget while cutting taxes. Minamata Bay, Japan, once a worldwide symbol of industrial pollution, was declared free of mercury 40 years after contaminated food fish were blamed for deaths and birth defects.
In 2002, in Afghanistan, a man identified by authorities as a would-be suicide bomber with more than a half-ton of explosives in his car was stopped by a chance traffic accident just 300 yards from the U.S. Embassy. A visibly exhausted Pope John Paul II greeted thousands of Roman Catholic faithful as he arrived in Guatemala City. An Amtrak train derailed outside Washington, injuring more than 100 people.
In 2006, the U.S. command announced it was sending 3,700 troops to Baghdad to try to quell sectarian violence sweeping the Iraqi capital. Actor-director Mel Gibson issued a lengthy statement apologizing for his drunken-driving arrest and for what he called his "despicable" statements toward the deputies who arrested him in Malibu, Calif.