Today in history
1453 – Turks capture Constantinople, capital of Byzantine Empire. Some historians list date as end of Middle Ages.
1692 – British fleet defeats French Navy at La Hogue, ending attempted invasion of England.
1932 – World War I veterans begin arriving in Washington to demand cash bonuses they weren’t scheduled to receive for another 13 years.
1942 – Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and the John Scott Trotter Orchestra record Irving Berlin’s White Christmas in Los Angeles for Decca Records.
1947 – Constituent Assembly in India outlaws ‘‘untouchability’’, a system of social ostracism practiced against people of lower classes.
1953 – Edmund Hillary, of New Zealand, and Tensing Norgay, of Nepal, become first to reach top of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain.
1966 – Buddhist nun burns herself to death outside a pagoda in the South Vietnamese city of Hue to protest country’s military government.
1972 – US President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign declaration pledging era of peaceful coexistence between the United States and Soviet Union.
1973 – Tom Bradley is elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles, defeating incumbent Sam Yorty.
1985 – Thirty-eight people are killed and 375 others injured at a Brussels stadium in riots before a European Cup soccer match.
1988 – US President Ronald Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union as he arrived in Moscow for a superpower summit with Soviet leader Mikhail. Gorbachev.
1990 – Boris Yeltsin is elected president of Russia, largest of Soviet Union’s 15 republics.
1996 – Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud Party, is elected Israeli prime minister by a slim margin.
2000 – Martial law is declared in Fiji by the islands’ military commander, Frank Bainimarama, 10 days after the latest coup.
2005 – French voters reject the European Union’s proposed constitution, dealing a staggering blow to efforts to further unify the 25-nation bloc by giving it a common charter and more power on the global stage.
2012 – The biggest scandal to rock the Vatican in decades widens with the pope’s butler, arrested for allegedly having confidential documents in his home, agreeing to co-operate with investigators, raising the possibility higher-ranking ecclesial heads may roll. Today’s Birthdays John F Kennedy, US president (1917-1963); Bob Hope, US comedianactor (1903-2003); Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong chief executive (1937– ).