1977: Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev is named president, becoming the first person to hold both posts simultaneously.
1996: Russian voters go to the polls in their first independent presidential election; the result is a run-off between President Boris Yeltsin (the eventual winner) and Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov.
2001: US President George W Bush and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin meet for the first time in Slovenia.
US astronaut Sunita “Suni” Williams sets a then-record aboard the international space station for the longest single spaceflight by any woman, surpassing the record of 188 days set by astronaut Shannon Lucid at the Mir space station in 1996.
2012: Egyptians began going to the polls for a two-day run-off to choose their first freely elected president; Islamist candidate Mohammed Morsi emerges the winner.
