TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2019

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY:

1542 - Catherine Howard was executed for adultery. She was the fifth wife of England’s King Henry VIII.

1601 - The first ships under the East India Company leave England.

1633 - Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before the Inquisition.

1900 - The Anglo-German accord of 1899 was ratified by Reichstag, in which Britain renounced rights in Samoa in favour of Germany and the US.

1920 - The League of Nations recognised the continued neutrality of Switzerland.

1945 - During World War II, the Soviets captured Budapest, Hungary, from the German army.

1945 - During World War II, Allied aircraft began bombing the German city of Dresden.

1955 - Israel acquired 4 of the 7 Dead Sea scrolls.

1960 - France detonated its first atomic bomb.

1971 - South Vietnamese troops invaded Laos. They were backed by U.S. air and artillery support.

1984 - Konstantin Chernenko was chosen to be general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee, succeeding the late Yuri Andropov.

1990 - In Ottawa, the United States and its European allies forged an agreement with the Soviet Union and East Germany on a two-stage formula to reunite Germany.

2000 - Charles M. Schulz’s last original Sunday “Peanuts” comic strip appeared in newspapers. Schulz had died the day before.

2001 - El Savador was hit with an earthquake that measured 6.6 on the Richter Scale. At least 400 people were killed.

2008 - The Australian Government formally apologises to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Birthdays

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta 1682

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord 1754 Bess Truman 1885 Grant Wood 1892 Wingy (Joseph) Manone 1900

Jean Muir (Fullarton) 1911