Today in history
1614 - Painter, sculptor and architect El Greco died in Toledo, Spain.
1739 - Dick Turpin, English highwayman, is hanged for murder at York.
1788 - An expedition led by Gen. Rufus Putnam established a settlement at present-day Marietta, Ohio.
1862 - Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.
1915 - Jazz singer-songwriter Billie Holiday, also known as ‘‘Lady Day, ‘‘ was born in Philadelphia.
1927 - The image and voice of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover were transmitted live from Washington to New York in the first successful long-distance demonstration of television.
1933 - A purge of Jews, socialists and democrats in public office begins in Germany, with the Nazis coming to power a month earlier.
1939 - Italy invaded Albania, which was annexed less than a week later.
1945 - During World War II, American planes intercepted and effectively destroyed a Japanese fleet, which included the battleship Yamato, that was headed to Okinawa on a suicide mission.
1948 - The United Nations World Health Organisation is established.
1953 - Dag Hammarskjold, Swedish diplomat, is elected secretary-general of United Nations.
1966 - The U.S. Navy recovered a hydrogen bomb that the U.S. Air Force had lost in the Mediterranean Sea off Spain following a B-52 crash.
1987 - US President Ronald Reagan announces American diplomats will not occupy the new embassy in Moscow until he is sure that it is secure from Soviet eavesdropping.
1990 - An arson fire aboard a ferry en route from Norway to Denmark killed 158 people.
2007 - A Russian rocket carrying US billionaire Charles Simonyi and two cosmonauts blasts off on a 13-day trip en route to the international space station. Simonyi, the fifth paying space tourist to make the trip, paid US$20 million.
2008 - A coroner’s jury in London rules that Princess Diana and boyfriend Dodi Fayed were unlawfully killed through the reckless actions of their driver and paparazzi in 1997.
2009 - Israel successfully tests an anti-missile system designed to protect the country against Iranian attack.
Today’s Birthdays: Sir David Low, New Zealand cartoonist (1891-1964); Billie Holiday, US jazz singer (1915-1957); David Frost, British TV personality (1939-2013); Francis Ford Coppola, US director (1939 - ); Jackie Chan, Hong Kong movie star (1954-); Russell Crowe, New Zealandborn actor (1964-).