TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS SATURDAY, MAY 12, 2018

On this day in history:

1588 - King Henry III fled Paris after Henry of Guise triumphantly entered the city. 1780 - Charleston, South Carolina fell to British forces. 1885 - In the Battle of Batoche, French Canadians rebelled against the Canadian government.

1926 - The airship Norge became the first vessel to fly over the North Pole.

1926 - In Britain, a general strike by trade unions ended. The strike began on May 3, 1926.

1937 - Britain’s King George VI was crowned at Westminster Abbey.

1940 - The Nazi conquest of France began with the German army crossing Muese River. 1942 - The Soviet Army launched its first major offensive of World War II and took Kharkov in the eastern Ukraine from the German army.

1943 - The Axis forces in North Africa surrendered during World War II.

1949 - The Soviet Union announced an end to the Berlin Blockade.

1965 - West Germany and Israel exchanged letters establishing diplomatic relations.

1978 - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that they would no longer exclusively name hurricanes after women.

1982 - South Africa unveiled a plan that would give voting rights to citizens of Asian and mixed-race descent, but not to blacks.

1984 - Nelson Mandela saw his wife for the first time in 22 years.

1999 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin dismissed Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and named Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin as his successor. 2010 - Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 crashes on final approach to Tripoli International Airport in Tripoli, Libya, killing 103 out of the 104 people on board. 2015 - A train derailment in Philadelphia kills eight people and injures more than 200. 2015 - Massive Nepal earthquake kills 218 people and injures more than 3500. 2017 - A ransomware attack attacks over 400 thousand computers worldwide.