ON THIS DAY

1162: Thomas Becket elected archbishop of Canterbury.

1430: Joan of Arc captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English.

1533: The marriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon is declared null and void.

1785: Benjamin Franklin announces his invention of bifocals.

1788: South Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution as the eighth American state.

1814: Third version of Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, had its world premiere in Vienna.

1915: Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary during World War I. 1934: US bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were shot to death in a police ambush in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.

1937: American industrialist John D. Rockefeller, once the world’s richest man, dies, aged 97.

1945: Nazi official Heinrich Himmler commits suicide by biting into a cyanide capsule while in British custody in Luneburg, Germany.

1959: Presbyterian church accepted women preachers.

1998: The Good Friday Agreement is accepted in a referendum in Northern Ireland.

2002: Golfing legend Sam Snead dies, aged 89.

Birthdays: Philip I of France (10521108); Robert Bernstein, American author and playwright (1919-1988); James Gleason, American writer and actor (1882-1959); Marvin Hagler, former champion boxer (1954-); Joan Collins, actor and author (1933-); Carl Linnaeus Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician (1707-1778); Paul Sironen, Australian rugby league player (1965-).