Today in history

352 - Liberius begins his reign as Catholic Pope.

884 - St Adrian III begins his reign as Catholic Pope.

1521 - Edward Stafford, claimant to English throne, is executed for treason.

1536 - Archbishop Cranmer declares invalid the marriage of England’s King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn.

1590 - Anne of Denmark is crowned Queen of Scotland.

1733 - Great Britain passes the Molasses Act, which put high tariffs on rum and molasses imported to the colonies from a country other than British possessions.

1787 - English slave ship Sisters, en route from Africa to Cuba, capsizes killing hundreds.

1809 - France’s Napoleon Bonaparte issues imperial decree annexing Papal States.

1814 - Norway declares its independence from Sweden with the adoption of a new constitution.

1861 - First package holiday for a popular market is arranged by Thomas Cook: A ’’Whitsuntide Working Men’s Excursion’’ from London to Paris for six days.

1940 - Nazi Germany occupies Brussels, Belgium, in World War II.

1948 - Soviet Union recognises the new state of Israel.

1954 - United States Supreme Court outlaws racial segregation in the state school system.

1973 - US Senate opens hearings into the Watergate scandal.

1989 - Taiwan’s prime minister Yu Kuo-hwa says he has submitted his resignation to preserve party unity.

1990 - Two messianic Jews confess to desecrating 300 Jewish graves in Haifa, Israel, in hopes Arabs would be blamed.

1997 - Zaire’s new leaders rename the African nation the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2000 - Indonesia’s first human rights trial convicts 24 soldiers of murdering dozens of villagers during a massacre in Aceh province in 1999.

2004 - Massachusetts becomes the first US state to allow same-sex marriage.

2011 - Queen Elizabeth II begins the first visit by a British monarch to the Republic of Ireland, unthinkable only 15 years ago.

2014 - Tens of thousands flee their homes in Bosnia and Serbia to escape the worst flooding in a century. Today’s Birthdays: Sandro Botticelli, Italian painter (1444-1510); Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary and Romania (1717-1780); Edward Jenner, English physician (1749-1823); Ayatollah Khomeini, Iranian religious leader (1900-1989); Maureen O’sullivan, US actress (1911-1998); Dennis Hopper, US actordirector (1936-2010); Tony Roche, Australian tennis player-coach (1945-); Bill Paxton, US actor (1955-2017).