- 1604: death of Peter Ernst I von Mansfeld-Vorderort (pictured), Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands
- 1907: birth of Hergé, comics author of The Adventures of Tintin
- 1919: birth of Paul Vanden Boeynants, Prime Minister of Belgium between 1966 and 1968, and again between 1978 and 1979
- 1967: The Innovation department store in the centre of Brussels burns down. It is the most devastating fire in Belgian history, which results in 323 dead and missing and 150 injured
- 1983: death of Albert Claude, biologist, laureate of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1974
- 1997: death of Herman De Coninck, poet and literary critic