Today in history
1798 – Ferdinand IV of Naples declares war on France and enters Rome.
1922 – Archaeologists announce they have found fabulous treasures in the tomb of Tutankhamen in Egypt.
1929 – United States Navy Lieutenant Richard E Byrd radios that he has made first aircraft flight over South Pole.
1947 – United Nations announces plan to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab entities, with Jerusalem under UN control.
1961 – Enos the chimp is launched from Cape Canaveral aboard the Mercury-atlas 5 spacecraft, which orbits Earth twice before returning.
1973 – More than 100 people perish in a department store fire in Kumamoto, Japan.
1981 – US actress Natalie Wood drowns in mysterious circumstances after a yacht party.
1987 – A Korean Air jet with 115 people on board disappears over Burma. A North Korean agent is arrested in Bahrain and confesses to planting a bomb on her government’s orders to disrupt the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
1989 – Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci flees to Hungary. In response to a growing prodemocracy movement in Czechoslovakia, the Communist-run parliament ends the party’s 40-year monopoly on power.
1997 – France passes a nationality law that allows citizenship for children born in France of foreign parents.
1999 – Northern Ireland’s rival parties form a Protestant-catholic government that requires bitter enemies to share power for the first time in history.
2000 – The general manager of a Greek shipping company leaps to his death two months after a ferry owned by his company smashed into rocks in the Aegean Sea, killing 80 passengers.
2001 – Representatives of the diamond industry and more than 30 governments agree to certify all legitimate shipments of rough diamonds in an unprecedented effort to weed out the trade in gems used to fund civil wars in Africa.
2002 – A Russian soldier under the influence of narcotics opens fire on fellow servicemen, killing at least eight and wounding three others.
2005 – In the first major ruling of Pope Benedict’s reign, the Vatican imposes restrictions on homosexuals entering the Catholic priesthood, saying men must first overcome any ‘‘transitory’’ gay tendencies.
2009 – Iran approves plans to build 10 industrial scale uranium enrichment facilities.
Today’s Birthdays: Giovanni Bellini, Italian artist (1426-1516); Louisa May Alcott, US author (1832-1888); Jacques Chirac, French politician (1932-); Don Cheadle, US actor (1964-).