The International Astronomical Union announced that the fourth and fifth moons of Pluto to be discovered would be named Kerberos and Styx, respectively.
Singing Revolution: The Soviet economic blockade of Lithuania (pictured) was lifted when the Lithuanian parliament agreed to suspend the effects of their act to re-establish Lithuania as a state.
More than a year after the end of the Vietnam War, North and South Vietnam officially merged under communist rule to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
The Civil Rights Act was signed into law, outlawing segregation in schools, at the workplace, and other facilities that served the general public in the United States.
The French frigate Méduse ran aground off the coast of present-day Mauritania, with the survivors escaping on a makeshift raft, depicted in Théodore Géricault's painting The Raft of the Medusa.