Today in history
1594 – Gustavus II of Sweden born; by the time of his death in 1632 Sweden had become the strongest power in Europe.
1854 – Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Brigade is published in England.
1905 – Salome, a one-act opera by Richard Strauss from the story by Oscar Wilde, has its first performance in Dresden, Germany, and is condemned as obscene.
1941 – China formally issues a declaration of war against Japan, Germany and Italy.
1992 – Prince Charles and Princess Diana of Britain announce they are separating but have no plans to divorce.
1994 – After 25 years of violence, the Irish Republican Army sits down with British officials to talk peace.
1995 – In India, 75 million children get polio vaccines in an attempt to eradicate the crippling disease.
1997 – The last Australian survivor who landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, Ted Matthews, dies.
1998 – British Home Secretary Jack Straw rules that Spain can start proceedings to extradite former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet.
2002 – United Airlines files for bankruptcy, the largest such case ever in the global airline industry.
2004 – Canada’s Supreme Court rules that gay marriage is constitutional.
2005 – French Socialist Realist painter Boris Taslitzky, who risked death drawing portraits on scraps of SS stationery he stole as a prisoner at a Nazi concentration camp, dies aged 94.
2007 – The world’s top two polluters, the United States and China, say they are not ready to commit to mandatory caps on globalwarming gases at the UN climate conference on Bali.
2010 – Furious student protesters rain sticks and rocks on riot police, vandalise government buildings and attack a car carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, after MPS approved a controversial hike in university tuition fees.
2013 – More than 1000,000 proeuropean demonstrators press demands that Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych resign after he refused to sign an association agreement between the Ukraine and the European Union. Today’s Birthdays: John Milton, English poet (1608-1674); Clarence Birdseye, US frozen food inventor (1886-1956); Douglas Fairbanks Jr, US actor (1909-2000); Kirk Douglas, US actor (1916-); Bob Hawke, former Australian prime minister (1929-); Buck Henry, US actor-writer (1930-); Dame Judi Dench, British actress (1934-); John Malkovich, US actor (1953-); Donny Osmond, US singer (1957-); Felicity Huffman, US actress, (1962-).