In 1993, a truck bomb built by terrorists exploded in the parking garage of New York's World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others.
In 1995, Barings PLC, Britain's oldest investment banking firm, collapsed after Nick Leeson, a 28-year-old securities dealer, lost over $1.4 billion by gambling on Tokyo stock prices.
In 2012, Trayvon Martin, 17, was shot to death in Sanford, Florida, during an altercation with neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who said he'd acted in self-defense. (Zimmerman was subsequently acquitted of second-degree murder.)
Ten years ago: Fifteen months after Japan's last liftoff ended in a spectacular fireball, an orange and white H-2A rocket blasted off from a remote southern island, carrying a weather and navigation satellite into orbit. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered his country's constitution changed to allow presidential challengers in an upcoming fall election. A fragment of granite bearing the name "John" — all that remained of a memorial to the six people killed in the 1993 terror attack on the World Trade Center — was installed as the central piece of a new post-9/11 memorial. Former Time magazine editor and U.S. ambassador to Austria, Henry A. Grunwald, died in New York at age 82.
Five years ago: New York Gov. David Paterson announced he wouldn't seek re-election amid a criminal investigation over his handling of a domestic violence complaint against a top aide. (Investigators found no evidence of witness tampering.) At the Vancouver Olympics, the Americans reached 34 medals with a silver and a bronze in short-track speedskating.
One year ago: President Barack Obama, speaking in St. Paul, Minnesota, said he would ask Congress for $300 billion to update aging roads and railways. Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed a bill pushed by social conservatives that would have allowed people with sincerely held religious beliefs to refuse to serve gays.
