On this day in 1945, 50 nations gathered in San Francisco, California to begin the United Nations Conference on International Organization.
On this day in 1953, Francis Crick and James D. Watson published an article in which they described the double helix structure of DNA.
On this day in 1983, American schoolgirl Samantha Smith was invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war.
And on this day in 2007, Boris Yeltsin's funeral became the first to be sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church for a head of state since the funeral of Tsar Alexander III in 1894.