TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 2017

On this day in history:

1415 - Henry the Navigator, the prince of Portugal, embarked on an expedition to Africa. 1777 - The Marquis de Lafayette arrived in the American colonies to help with their rebellion against the British.

1874 - Explorer John Forrest’s party fires upon Aborigines during an attack in central Western Australia.

1900 - China’s Boxer Rebellion against foreigners and Chinese Christians erupted into violence. 1922 - Charlie Osborne started the longest attack on hiccups. He hiccuped over 435 million times before stopping. He died in 1991, 11 months after his hiccups ended.

1923 - Australia sees the introduction of Vegemite. 1923 - The French set a trade barrier between the occupied Ruhr and the rest of Germany. 1940 - Paris was evacuated before the German advance on the city.

1943 - German spies landed on Long Island, New York. They were soon captured. 1944 - Germany launched 10 of its new V1 rockets against Britain from a position near the Channel coast. Of the 10 rockets only 5 landed in Britain and only one managed to kill (6 people in London).

1949 - Bao Dai entered Saigon to rule Vietnam. He had been installed by the French.

1951 - Former Australian Prime Minister, Ben Chifley, dies.

1951 - UN troops seized Pyongyang, North Korea. 1978 - Israelis withdrew the last of their invading forces from Lebanon.

1994 - A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, found Exxon Corp. and Captain Joseph Hazelwood to be reckless in the Exxon Valdez oil spill. 1995 - France announced that they would conduct eight more nuclear tests in the South Pacific.

2000 - In Pyongyang, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il welcomed South Korea’s President Kim Dae for a three-day summit. It was the first such meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea.