TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS TUESDAY, MAY 29, 2018

On this day in history:

1453 - Constantinople fell to Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, ending the Byzantine Empire. 1660 - Charles II was restored to the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth. 1861 - George Goyder, responsible for the controversial “Goyder Line”, becomes Surveyor-General of South Australia.

1874 - Australian explorer Giles finishes his last keg of water on his desperate attempt to reach his base camp. 1880 - The Great Hall of Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building is opened to the public for the first time. 1917 - Tasmania’s coat of arms is approved by Royal Warrant from King George V.

1922 - Ecuador became independent.

1951 - C.F. Blair became the first man to fly over the North Pole in single engine plane. 1953 - Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became first men to reach the top of Mount Everest. 1974 - US President Nixon agreed to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts.

1985 - Thirty-nine people were killed and 400 were injured in a riot at a European Cup soccer match in Brussels, Belgium.

1990 - Boris Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian republic by the Russian parliament.

1997 - The ruling party in Indonesia, Golkar, won the Parliament election by a record margin. There was a boycott movement and rioting that killed 200 people. 2000 - Fiji’s military took control of the nation and declared martial law following a coup attempt by indigenous Fijians in mid-May.

2001 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the disabled golfer Casey Martin can use a cart to ride in tournaments. 2004 - The National World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.

2008 - A doublet earthquake, of combined magnitude 6.1, strikes Iceland near the town of Selfoss, injuring 30 people. 2012 - A 5.8-magnitude earthquake hits northern Italy near Bologna, killing at least 24 people.