This Day in History
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1967: Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the US Army.
OTHER EVENTS
1521: Holy Roman Emperor Charles V grants his brother, Archduke Ferdinand, the Hapsburg possessions in Lower Austria, Carinthia, Styria and Carinola.
1655: English fleet destroys pirate fleet of Bey of Tunis and releases prisoners in Algiers.
1758: The fifth president of the United States, James Monroe, is born in Westmoreland County, Virginia.
1770: British navigator Capt James Cook, aboard Endeavor, lands in Australia, naming the natural harbour Botany Bay — now in the suburbs of Sydney.
1788: Maryland becomes the seventh state to ratify the
Constitution of the United States. 1817: The United States and Britain sign the Rush-bagot Treaty, which limits the number of naval vessels allowed in the Great Lakes.
1876: Britain’s Queen Victoria is declared Empress of India.
1910: Albanian revolt is suppressed by Turkish Army.
1918: Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the archduke’s wife, Sophie, dies in prison of tuberculosis.
1925: The International
Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts, which gave rise to the term ‘Art Deco’, begins a six-month run in Paris.
1936: King Farouk ascends to throne in Egypt; Arab high command is formed to unite
Arabs against Jewish claims.
1945: Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are executed by partisans in World War II.
1952: War with Japan officially ends as a treaty signed by the United States and 47 other countries takes effect.
1969: Charles de Gaulle resigns as president of France.
1976: India’s Supreme Court upholds right of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Government to imprison political opponents without court hearing.
1980: US President Jimmy Carter accepts the resignation of Secretary of State Cyrus
Vance, who opposed the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing American hostages in Iran.
1988: Soviet-backed Afghan troops shell border areas, killing 15 Pakistanis.
1989: Students in South Korea fight police after authorities ban march to North Korean border.
1992: A new, smaller
Yugoslavia is established by
Serbia and Montenegro after four other republics, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-herzegovina and Macedonia secede.
1994: Former Central Intelligence Agency official Aldrich Ames, who betrayed US secrets to the Soviet Union, pleads guilty to espionage and tax evasion.
He is sentenced to life in prison without parole.
1996: A gunman slaughters 35 tourists near the ruins of a colonial prison in Tasmania, Australia.
1998: Nigeria’s former deputy leader, General Oladipyo Diya, and five others are sentenced to death by firing squad for plotting to overthrow military leader General Sani Abacha.
1999: Peru’s President Alberto Fujimori orders armoured troop carriers and 20,000 police into the streets to control the first protest against his economic policies.
2000: Guerrillas blow up an Israeli-controlled military outpost in southern Lebanon, killing four pro-israeli militiamen and wounding three others.
2003: Britain’s Glaxosmithkline PLC, the world’s largest producer of AIDS drugs, announces it will reduce the price of its popular AIDS medication Combivir to US$0.90 a day, from US$1.70, in 63 developing countries.
2004: Macedonia’s liberal Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski wins presidential election with 62 per cent of the votes cast. But his conservative opponent Sasko Kedev, who garners 37 per cent, claims voter fraud and demands the ballot be annulled. Crvenkovski and Kedev are seeking to replace former President Boris Trajkovski, who died in a February airplane crash in Bosnia.
2005: Iraq’s National Assembly approves the country’s first democratically elected Government, a Shiite-dominated body that excludes the Sunni minority from meaningful positions and threatens efforts to dampen the deadly insurgency.
2006: The International Atomic Energy Agency says in a report that Iran has defied a UN Security Council call to freeze uranium enrichment and is stonewalling efforts to determine if it is developing nuclear arms.
2008: Austrian Josef Fritzl,
73, confesses to imprisoning his daughter for 24 years in a windowless cell with a soundproofed door and fathering seven children. He also tells investigators that he tossed the body of one of the children in an incinerator when the infant died after birth.
2010: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown blunders during campaign season when an open microphone captures him slamming a voter he had just been trying to win over.
2011: The moderate Palestinian president plays down concerns that his emerging alliance with the militant Hamas will undermine peace negotiations with Israel, insisting that he will retain control over foreign policy and remain committed to resolving the conflict.
2012: Syria derides UN chief Ban Ki-moon as biased and calls his comments “outrageous” after he blames the regime for widespread ceasefire violations — the latest sign of trouble for an international peace plan many expect to fail.
2013: The fugitive owner of an illegally constructed building that collapsed and killed at least 377 people in Bangladesh is captured by a commando force as he tries to flee to India.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Yi Sun-shin, Korean admiral and national hero (1545-1598); James Monroe, US president (17581831); Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, Portuguese dictator (1889-1970);
Kurt Goedel, Austrian-born US mathematician (1906-1978);
Saddam Hussein, Iraqi dictator
(1937-2006); Harper Lee, US author (1926-2016); Ann-margret, Swedish-born US actress(1941- ); Penelope Cruz, Spanish actress
(1974- ); Jessica Alba, US actress (1981- )