Today in history
211 — Death of Lucius Septimius Severus, Roman emperor responsible for making the empire’s government a military monarchy.
1789 — Electors unanimously choose George Washington to be the first US president.
1874 — British forces under Garnet Wolseley burn Kumasi, Ghana, ending Ashanti War.
1924 — Mahatma Gandhi, a pacifist who led the struggle for Indian independence from Britain, is released after spending two years in jail in Bombay.
1927 — British driver Malcolm Campbell breaks the world land speed record in his car Bluebird, driving at 174.224 mph (about 280 km/h).
1948 — Sri Lanka becomes a selfgoverning dominion in British Commonwealth.
1966 — An All Nippon Airways Boeing 727 jet aircraft crashes in Tokyo Bay killing 133 passengers and crew.
1971 — British carmaker Rollsroyce declares itself bankrupt.
1976 — An earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale kills 23,000 people near Guatemala city.
1997 — Sixteen months after being cleared of murder charges, a civil trial jury blames OJ Simpson for the killings of his ex-wife and her friend.
1998 — A 6.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tremors in Afghanistan’s remote northeast kill at least 4500 people.
2003 — The Yugoslav parliament endorses the creation of a loose union of Serbia and Montenegro.
2004 — Mark Zuckerberg launches ‘‘thefacebook’’ as a Harvard-based social network.
2008 — Egyptian forces seal the last of the breaks in the Gaza-egypt barrier broken down by Hamas militants, ending 12 days of freedom for Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians.
2013 — British scientists announce they have recovered the remains of King Richard III from under a municipal carpark in Leicester; Former NSW Labor minister and powerbroker Eddie Obeid appears at the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
2015 — The wing of Transasia Airways Flight 235 hits a bridge shortly after taking off in Taipei, causing the jet to crash into the Keelung River, killing 38 people; Jordan calls for a decisive battle against Islamic State after the militants burn a Jordanian pilot in a cage and broadcast the horrific images on outdoor screens in their stronghold.
2016 — The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention rules that Julian Assange is being arbitrarily detained. Today’s Birthdays: Charles Lindbergh, US aviation pioneer (1902-1974); Betty Friedan, US feminist author (1921-1985); Alice Cooper, US rock singer (1948-)