Today in history
1788 - Britain passes parliamentary motion abolishing slave trade.
1914 - Mother’s Day is proclaimed in the United States.
1933 - Tornadoes in Kentucky and Tennessee, US, kill 61 people and leave a trail of destruction.
1955 - West Germany is admitted into Nato.
1960 - The United States Food and Drug Administration approves use of a birth control pill.
1974 - Impeachment hearings begin against US President Richard Nixon for his involvement in the Watergate coverup.
1978 - The bullet-riddled body of Italy’s former Prime Minister Aldo Moro is found in a parked car in central Rome, 54 days after his abduction by Red Brigade terrorists.
2000 - In a landmark human rights trial, 13 Indonesian soldiers admit they were following orders when they dragged 26 student activists into a field in Aceh province and killed them.
2001 - While in Iran, Cuban leader Fidel Castro receives a hero’s welcome and calls the US an ‘‘imperialist king’’ that would fall just as the shah fell in 1979.
2002 - Maryland Governor Parris Glendening orders a moratorium on executions pending completion of a study to determine whether racial bias affected death penalty decisions.
2004 - A bomb rips through a stadium in the Chechen capital of Grozny during a Victory Day ceremony, killing provincial president Akhmad Kadyrov, the Kremlinbacked president leading efforts to control separatist violence in the warwracked region. Separatist rebels are blamed for the attack, which also killed 24 other people.
2005 - Two US Marines are killed as they check a cave pounded by warplanes in a five-hour battle in eastern Afghanistan that also leaves 23 insurgents dead.
2006 - Union leaders in Puerto Rico call off island-wide protests as a special commission looks for answers to a fiscal crisis that party closed the government and eroded the credit rating of the US territory.
2009 - Jacob Zuma takes power in the culmination of an extraordinary political comeback, pledging to Nelson Mandela and the nation to renew the spirit of commitment and hope of South Africa’s first black presidency.
2013 - Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, who irked Washington with his frequent criticism of American military operations in his country, says that his government is ready to let the US have nine bases across Afghanistan after most foreign troops withdraw in 2014. Today’s Birthdays: Candice Bergen, US actress (1946-); Billy Joel, US pop singer (1949-); James L Brooks, US director (1940-); John Corbett, US actor (1961-).