Also on this date

In 1922, a 20-ton meteor crashed near Blackstone, Virginia.

In 1943, during World War II, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered.

In 1949, the Soviet Union lifted the Berlin Blockade, which the Western powers had succeeded in circumventing with their Berlin Airlift.

In 1958, the United States and Canada signed an agreement to create the North American Air Defense Command (later, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD).

In 1982, in Fatima, Portugal, security guards overpowered a Spanish priest armed with a bayonet who attacked Pope John Paul II. (In 2008, the pope’s longtime private secretary revealed that the pontiff was slightly wounded in the assault.)

In 2008, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake in China’s Sichuan province left more than 87,000 people dead or missing.

In 2009, suspected Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk was deported from the United States to Germany.

Ten years ago: An Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330 jetliner plunged into the Libyan desert less than a mile from the runway in Tripoli after a flight from Johannesburg; a 9year-old Dutch boy was the sole survivor of the crash that killed 103 people.

Five years ago: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Russia to meet President Vladimir Putin with an eye on easing badly strained relations over conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.

One year ago: The White House’s top economic adviser acknowledged on “Fox News Sunday” that U.S. consumers and businesses pay the tariffs that the administration had imposed on billions of dollars of Chinese goods; Larry Kudlow added that China would suffer losses from reduced exports to the U.S.