The U.S. Navy officially abandoned its search for Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan after their plane vanished over the Pacific, ending one of aviation's enduring mysteries.

J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' hit British bookshops, introducing Bilbo Baggins and Middle-earth to the world.

Pablo Picasso's mural-sized painting Guernica, depicting the bombing of a Basque town, opens for exhibition in London after its Paris debut months earlier.

Japanese forces pressed their assault on the Chinese city of Taiyuan in Shanxi province, part of a brutal campaign in the opening months of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Exiled in Mexico, Leon Trotsky gave testimony to the Dewey Commission refuting Stalinist charges against him from the Moscow show trials.

Imperial Japanese troops captured Nanjing, China's capital, beginning six weeks of mass killing and atrocity that claimed an estimated 200,000 lives.