Explore significant historical events on this day with BBC News.

May 6, 2008 · The State of Israel was proclaimed on 14 May 1948, the culmination of nearly 2,000 years of hopes by Jewish people that they would one day return to the land from which the Romans expelled them. The Holocaust of European Jewry in the Second World War strengthened their determination. The Balfour Declaration by the British government in 1917, enshrined in a League of Nations mandate in 1920 ...

Jul 4, 2008 · The final mystery of 9/11 will soon be solved, according to US experts investigating the collapse of the third tower at the World Trade Center. The 47-storey third tower, known as Tower Seven, collapsed seven hours after the twin towers. Investigators are expected to say ordinary fires on several different floors caused the collapse. Conspiracy theorists have argued that the third tower was ...

Mar 2, 2006 · Actor Jack Wild, who played The Artful Dodger in 1968 film Oliver!, has died at the age of 53. Wild was nominated for an Oscar when he was just 16 for the role. He also starred in late-1960s US children's fantasy TV series HR Pufnstuf. He suffered from mouth cancer after years of heavy drinking and smoking and had his voice box and tongue removed. Wild's agent Alex Jay said the actor "died ...

Feb 28, 2000 · The Moors murders were a series of crimes that shocked Britain when they first came to light. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley murdered four children during 1963 and 1964 and buried their bodies on Saddleworth Moor, near Manchester in northern England. Lesley Ann Downey, 10, John Kilbride, 12, Keith Bennett, 12, and Pauline Reade, 16, were all sexually assaulted before their deaths at the hands of ...

Oct 20, 2009 · It's a word much applied by opponents to the British National Party and other radical political movements, but what is a "fascist"?

Diana, Princess of Wales, has died after a car crash in Paris. She was taken to hospital in the early hours of Sunday morning where surgeons tried for two hours to save her life but she died at 0300 BST. In a statement Buckingham Palace said the Queen and the Prince of Wales were "deeply shocked and distressed". Prince Charles broke the news of their mother's death to Princes William and Harry ...

Sunday, January 18, 1998 Published at 10:10 GMT UK Why the Pilgrim Fathers left England The pilgrimage of the Pilgrim Fathers The Pilgrim Fathers were traitors, a band of renegades defying the authority of King James I. That was the official version. The pilgrims believed that they were true Christians, determined to "purify" the Christian …

Apr 11, 2005 · The massacre by Japanese troops of the Chinese population of Nanjing was one of the worst atrocities of modern times.

May 22, 2006 · Yugoslavia was first formed as a kingdom in 1918 and then recreated as a Socialist state in 1945 after the Axis powers were defeated in World War II. The constitution established six constituent republics in the federation: Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia. Serbia also had two autonomous provinces: Kosovo and Vojvodina. By 1992 the Yugoslav Federation was ...