TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS THURSDAY, JULY 6, 2017

On this day in history:

1483 - King Richard III of England was crowned. 1699 - Captain William Kidd, the pirate, was captured in Boston, MA, and deported back to England.

1841 - Australian explorer Eyre reaches King’s River, just short of his final destination of King George’s Sound on his epic journey from east to west, only to find the river too high to cross on horseback.

1885 - Louis Pasteur successfully tested his anti-rabies vaccine. The child used in the test later became the director of the Pasteur Institute.

1905 - Fingerprints were exchanged for the first time between officials in Europe and the US. The person in question was John Walker. 1917 - During the First World War, Arab forces led by T.E. Lawrence captured the port of Aqaba from the Turks.

1919 - A British dirigible landed in New York at Roosevelt Field. It completed the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by an airship.

1923 - The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established.

1942 - Diarist Anne Frank and her family took refuge from the Nazis in Amsterdam.

1943 - The last of the heavy Japanese bombing attacks on Darwin occurs, though less serious attacks continue. 1945 - Nicaragua became the first nation to formally accept the United Nations Charter. 1966 - Malawi became a republic within the Commonwealth with Dr. Hastings Banda as its first president.

1967 - The Biafran War erupted. The war lasted two-and-a-half years. About 600,000 people died.

1981 - Former President of Argentina Isabel Peron was freed after five years of house arrest by a federal court. 1985 - Martina Navratilova won her 4th consecutive Wimbledon singles title. 1997 - In Cambodia, Second Prime Minister Hun Sen ousted First Prime Minister Norodom Ranariddh and claimed to have the capital under his control. 1998 - Protestants rioted in many parts of Northern Ireland after British authorities blocked an Orange Order march in Portadown.