TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Wednesday, February 26.

On this day in history:

1606 – Dutch explorer Willem Jansz becomes the first recorded European to land on Australia’s shores.

1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from the Island of Elba. He then began his second conquest of France.

1848 – The second French Republic was proclaimed.

1872 – The brig Maria sinks off the coast of Queensland, Australia, with the loss of 21 by drowning and 14 by indigenous Australians.

1881 – S.S. Ceylon began a worldwide cruise, beginning in Liverpool, England.

1916 – Mutual signed Charlie Chaplin to a film contract. 1952 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that Britain had developed an atomic bomb.

1986 – Corazon Aquino was inaugurated president of the Philippines. Long time President Ferdinand Marcos went into exile.

1987 – The USSR conducted its first nuclear weapons test after a 19-month moratorium period.

1991 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein announced on Baghdad Radio that Iraqi troops were being withdrawn from Kuwait.

1993 – Six people were killed and more than a thousand injured when a van exploded in the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center in New York City. The bomb had been built by Islamic extremists.

2001 – A UN tribunal convicted Bosnian Croat political leader Dario Kordic and military commander Mario Cerkez of war crimes. They had ordered the systematic murder and persecution of Muslim civilians during the Bosnian war.