Scientists failed to make contact with the Mars Polar Lander after it began its fiery descent toward the red planet. the spacecraft was presumed destroyed.
Union Carbide pesticide plant leak of methyl isocyanate and other toxic compounds in Bhopal, India, kills 2,259 (official figure) - other estimates as high as 16,000 (including later deaths) and over half a million injured.
Police arrested some 800 students at the University of California at Berkeley who had stormed the administration buildingthe previous day and staged a massive sit-in.
The House Un-American Activities Committee announced that former Communist spy Whittaker Chambers had produced microfilm of secret documents hidden inside a pumpkin on his Maryland farm.
Eureka Stockade: In what is claimed by many to be the birth of Australian democracy, more than 20 goldminers at Ballarat, Victoria, are killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences.