Today in history
1030 — King Olaf, patron saint of Norway, is killed in battle.
1565 — Mary Queen of Scots marries Henry, Lord Darnley, in Edinburgh.
1696 — Russian forces of Peter the Great take Azov from the Turks.
1833 — Death of William Wilberforce who campaigned successfully for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.
1848 — Irish nationalist insurrection at Tipperary, led by William Smith O’brien, fails.
1890 — Vincent van Gogh, Dutch post-impressionist painter, dies two days after shooting himself.
1900 — Italy’s King Humbert I is assassinated by an anarchist.
1914 — Transcontinental telephone service begins in the United States with first phone conversation between New York and San Francisco.
1921 — All-india Congress decides to boycott Prince of Wales’ visit to India.
1941 — Vichy France and Japan sign agreement for ‘‘joint protection’’ of Indochina. Allows France to continue administering colonies, but Japan sends in troops.
1948 — First Olympic Games after World War II open in London at Wembley Stadium.
1958 — US President Dwight Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which creates Nasa.
1973 — Voters in Greece endorse decisions by their leaders to abolish Greek monarchy and install George Papadopoulos as president.
1981 — Prince Charles marries Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral in London.
1993 — Israeli Supreme Court rules John Demjanjuk was not Nazi death camp guard Ivan The Terrible.
1994 — Former Italian prime minister Bettino Craxi is sentenced to 81⁄2 years in jail after being found guilty of fraud.
2004 — British-born scientist Francis Crick, who helped discover the double helix shape of the DNA, dies aged 88.
2009 — Microsoft finally persuades Yahoo! to surrender control of the internet’s second-most popular search engine and join it in a daunting battle – taking on the overwhelming dominance of Google in the online advertising market.
2015 — A piece of wing from missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370 washes up on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. Today’s Birthdays: Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator (1883-1945); Dag Hammarskjold, Swedish UN Secretary-general and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1905-1961); Clara Bow, US silent-era film star (1905-1965); Peter Jennings, US television anchor (1938-2005); Fernando Alonso, Spanish F1 world champion (1981-).