1227: Genghis Khan, the Mongol leader who forged an empire stretching from the east coast of China west to the Aral Sea, died in camp during a campaign against the Chinese kingdom of Xi Xia.
1920: The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was ratified by Tennessee, giving it the two-thirds majority of state ratification necessary to make it the law of the land.
1960: The first commercially produced oral contraceptives went on the market.
1963: James Meredith graduated from the University of Mississippi. He was the first African-American to attend the school and his enrollment touched off deadly riots, necessitating the use of armed guards.
1977: Comedian Julius Groucho Marx, leader of the wacky Marx Brothers, died at the age of 87.
1982: Lebanon and the Palestine Liberation Organization approved a plan for withdrawal of PLO fighters from besieged West Beirut. Israel approved it the following day.
1992: A convoy of 17 buses carrying 1,000 women and children left war-torn Sarajevo in the second such evacuation from Bosnia in a week.
1998: In the wake of his admission of an affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, U.S. President Bill Clinton was urged to resign by several members of Congress and more than 100 daily newspapers.
2002: Abu Nidal, one of the most feared of the Palestinian terrorists, was found shot to death, an apparent suicide.
2003: Authorities estimated as many as 10,000 people had died in heat-related deaths in France during the ongoing European heat wave.
2005: Dennis Rader, the Kansas man who called himself the BTK killer -- for bind, torture, kill -- and confessed to slaying 10 people, was sentenced to 10 consecutive life-in-prison terms.
