TODAY in HISTORY

Today is Saturday, June 09, the 160th day of 2018. There are 205 days left in the year.

721 Odo of Aquitaine defeats the Moors in the Battle of Toulouse.

747 Abbasid Revolution: Abu Muslim Khorasani begins an open revolt against Umayyad rule, which is carried out under the sign of the Black Standard.

1534 Jacques Cartier is the first European to describe and map the Saint Lawrence River.

1667 Second Anglo- Dutch War: The Raid on the Medway by the Dutch fleet begins. It lasts for five days and results in the worst ever defeat of the Royal Navy.

1732 James Oglethorpe is granted a royal charter for the colony of the future U. S. state of Georgia. 1962 British forces begin the Siege of Havana and capture the city during the Seven Years’ War.

1772 The British schooner Gaspee is burned in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island.

1798 Irish Rebellion of 1798: Battles of Arklow and Saintfield.

1815 Luxembourg declares independence from the French Empire. 1885 Treaty of Tientsin is signed to end the Sino- French War, with China eventually giving up Tonkin and Annam – most of present- day Vietnam – to France. 1900 Indian nationalist Birsa Munda dies in a British prison of cholera.

1915 William Jennings Bryan resigns as Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state over a disagreement regarding the United States’ handling of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.

1928 Charles Kingsford Smith completes the first trans- Pacific flight in a Fokker Trimotor monoplane, the Southern Cross.

1934 Donald Duck makes his debut in The Wise Little Hen. 1948 Foundation of the International Council on Archives under the auspices of the Unesco.

1957 First ascent of Broad Peak by Fritz Wintersteller, Marcus Schmuck, Kurt Diemberger, and Hermann Buhl.

1959 The USS George Washington is launched. It is the first nuclear- powered ballistic missile submarine.

1968 US President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a national day of mourning following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

1978 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints opens its priesthood to “all worthy men”, ending a 148- year- old policy of excluding black men.

1999 Kosovo War: The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and NATO sign a peace treaty.

2010 At least 40 people are killed and more than 70 wounded in a suicide bombing at a wedding party in Arghandab, Kandahar.