TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS FRIDAY, MAY 11, 2018

On this day in history: 0330 - Constantinople, previously the town of Byzantium, was founded. 1647 - Peter Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam to become governor.

1689 - French and English naval battle takes place at Bantry Bay.

1745 - French forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army at Fontenoy.

1812 - British prime Minster Spencer Perceval was shot by a bankrupt banker in the lobby of the House of Commons. 1813 - Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth set out to cross the Blue Mountains in Australia’s first major exploration venture.

1860 - Giuseppe Garibaldi landed at Marsala, Sicily. 1944 - A major offensive was launched by the allied forces in central Italy.

1949 - Siam changed its name to Thailand.

1960 - Israeli soldiers captured Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires.

1985 - More than 50 people died when a flash fire swept through a soccer stadium in Bradford, England.

1997 - Garry Kasparov, world chess champion, lost his first ever multi-game match. He lost to IBM’s chess computer Deep Blue. It was the first time a computer had beaten a world-champion player. 1998 - India conducted its first underground nuclear tests, three of them, in 24 years. The tests were in violation of a global ban on nuclear testing.

1998 - A French mint produced the first coins of Europe’s single currency. The coin is known as the euro. 2000 - Second Chechen War: Chechen separatists ambush Russian paramilitary forces in the Republic of Ingushetia. 2011 - Earthquake of magnitude 5.1 attacks in Lorca, Spain.

2013 - 52 people are killed in a bombing in Reyhanlı, Turkey. 2014 - 15 people are killed and 46 injured in Kinshasa in a stampede caused by tear gas being thrown into soccer stands by police officers attempting to defuse a hostile incident.

2016 - More than 110 people are killed in an ISIL bombing in Baghdad.