On this day in 1781, General Charles Cornwallis, British commander, unwittingly delivered his 8,000 troops into the hands of the besieging American forces at Yorktown, Virginia, allowing Gen. George Washington to win the War of Independence for the American colonists.
On this day in 1872, the Holtermann Nugget, a slate weighing 235.14 kilograms, was found in New South Wales, Australia. It contained 82.11 kilograms of gold, the largest single mass of gold ever found.
On this day in 1947, the Taiwan Provincial Government opened Keelung and Kaohsiung as international seaports.
And on this day in 1987, Wall Street experienced the worst day in its history, known as "Black Monday," with the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeting a record 508.32 points, knocking US$500 billion off share values. The decline was 22.6 percent, almost 10 percent greater than the stock market crash of 1929, which heralded the Great Depression.