1854: During the Crimean War, Britain and France declared war on Russia.
1941: Novelist and critic Virginia Woolf, 59, drowned herself near her home in Lewes, East Sussex, England.
1964: Lars Herseth, a low hurdler, was among the lettermen returning to the Central track team that season.
1979: America's worst commercial nuclear accident occurred inside the Unit 2 reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pa.
1983: Negotiations were beginning between the city of Aberdeen and the Sheraton Motor Inn to build a $1 million city-owned convention center on the north side of the Sheraton.
2010: President Barack Obama secretly visited Afghanistan near the front lines of the increasingly bloody 8-year-old war he was expanding.
Source: Dacotah Prairie Museum and The Associated Press
