On this day in 1945, the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed by Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and accepted aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
On this day in 1970, NASA announced the cancellation of two Apollo missions to the Moon, Apollo 15 (the designation is re-used by a later mission), and Apollo 19.
On this day in 1990, Transnistria was unilaterally proclaimed a Soviet republic; the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev declared the decision null and void.
On this day in 1998, the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide.