TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS MONDAY, JULY 16, 2018

On this day in history: 1765 - Prime Minister of England Lord Greenville resigned and was replaced by Lord Rockingham.

1774 - Russia and the Ottoman Empire signed the treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji, ending their six-year war.

1791 - Louis XVI was suspended from office until he agreed to ratify the constitution.

1825 - The western border of New South Wales is extended to offset French and Dutch interests in Australia’s north coast.

1875 - The new French constitution was finalised. 1914 - The original Man From Snowy River, on whom Banjo Paterson’s ballad was based, is buried.

1914 - Australia’s first interstate air mail departs Melbourne.

1940 - Adolf Hitler ordered the preparations to begin on the invasion of England, known as Operation Sea Lion. 1942 - French police officers rounded up 13,000 Jews and held them in the Winter Velodrome. The round-up was part of an agreement between Pierre Laval and the Nazis. Germany had agreed to not deport French Jews if France arrested foreign Jews. 1944 - Soviet troops occupied Vilna, Lithuania, in their drive toward Germany.

1950 - The largest crowd in sporting history was 199,854. They watched Uruguay defeat Brazil in the World Cup soccer finals in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 1951 - J.D. Salinger’s novel The

Catcher in the Rye was first published.

1979 - Saddam Hussein became president of Iraq after forcing Hasan al-Bakr to resign.

1981 - After 23 years with the name Datsun, executives of Nissan changed the name of their cars to Nissan. 2005 - J.K. Rowling’s book Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released. It was the sixth in the Harry Potter series. The book sold 6.9 million copies on its first day of release. 2007 - An earthquake of magnitude 6.8 and 6.6 aftershock occurs off the Niigata coast of Japan killing eight people, injuring at least 800 and damaging a nuclear power plant.