TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS TUESDAY, JULY 25, 2017

On this day in history:

1394 - Charles VI of France issued a decree for the general expulsion of Jews from France. 1587 - Japanese strong-man Hideyoshi banned Christianity in Japan and ordered all Christians to leave.

1593 - France’s King Henry IV converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism. 1759 - British forces defeated a French army at Fort Niagara in Canada.

1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte defeated the Ottomans at Aboukir, Egypt.

1845 - China granted Belgium equal trading rights with Britain, France and the United States.

1851 - An uncredited diary entry describes the ‘Yowie’ of southeast Queensland in detail.

1862 - After successfully crossing Australia from south to north, John McDouall Stuart raises the British flag at the mouth of the Mary River. 1909 - French aviator Louis Bleriot flew across the English Channel in a monoplane. He travelled from Calais to Dover in 37 minutes. He was the first man to fly across the channel. 1914 - Russia declared that it would act to protect Serbian sovereignty.

1924 - Greece announced the deportation of 50,000 Armenians.

1943 - Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was overthrown in a coup.

1946 - The US detonated an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. It was the first underwater test of the device. 1952 - Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth of the US.

1973 - The numbat is proclaimed as Western Australia’s official faunal emblem.

1984 - Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space. She was aboard the orbiting space station Salyut 7. 1994 - Israel and Jordan formally ended the state of war that had existed between them since 1948.

1997 - K.R. Narayanan became India’s president. He was the first member of the Dalits caste to do so.

1999 - Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France. He was only the second American to win the race.