1862 ~ The first railroad post office was tested on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad in Missouri.

1885 ~ G. Moore Peters patented the cartridge-loading machine. 

1917 ~ Aleksandr Kerensky formed a provisional government in Russia.

1930 ~ Construction began on Boulder Dam, later Hoover Dam, on the Colorado River. 

1946 ~ Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini was canonized as the first American saint.

1950 ~ The UN Security Council authorized military aid for South Korea.

1969 ~ Canada's House of Commons gave final approval to a measure that made the French language equal to English throughout the national government.

1983 ~ Eleven-year-old Samantha Smith of Manchester, Maine, left for a visit to the Soviet Union at the personal invitation of Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov.

1987 ~ Public testimony at the Iran-Contra hearing began.

1998 ~ A jury in Santa Monica, CA, convicted Mikail Markhasev of murdering Ennis Cosby, Bill Cosby's only son, during a roadside robbery.

1999 ~ In Sierra Leone, President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and rebel leader Foday Sankoh signed a pact to end the nation's civil war.

2000 ~ Cisco Systems Inc. announced that it would buy Netiverse Inc. for $210 million in stock. It was the 13th time Cisco had purchased a company in 2000.

2003 ~ In Liberia, a team of U.S. military experts arrived at the U.S. embassy compound to assess whether to deploy troops as part of a peacekeeping force in the country.

2005 ~ In London, at least 66 people were killed and at least 700 were injured when several bombs were set off in subway cars and double-decker buses.