At the age of 55

• 17-September-2005 : Helen Clark, leader of the Labour Party, is rereelected for a third term in the New Zealand general election.
• 20-October-2004 : Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono becomes the first directly elected President of Indonesia.
• 28-March-2004 : In France, the government of prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin suffers a stunning and unprecedented defeat in regional elections.
• 19-January-2004 : U.S. Senator John Kerry (D(DMA) wins the Iowa Democratic caucus. Vermont Governor Howard Dean's concession speech ends with a lively but controversial scream.
• 08-January-2002 : The No Child Left Behind Act is signed into law by U.S. President George W. Bush.
• 04-February-1997 : After at first contesting the results, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic recognizes opposition victories in the November 1996 elections.
• 18-June-1982 : Argentine military dictator Leopoldo Galtieri resigns, in the wake of his country's defeat in the Falklands War.
• 13-February-1974 : Nobel Prize winning writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is expelled from the Soviet Union (he returns May 27, 1994).
• 17-May-1970 : Thor Heyerdahl sets sail from Morocco on the papyrus boat ''Ra II'', to sail the Atlantic Ocean.
• 05-November-1968 : U.S. presidential election, 1968: Republican challenger Richard M. Nixon defeats Vice President Hubert Humphrey and American Independent Party candidate George C. Wallace.