Today in history
1667 — The first known successful blood transfusion is carried out by Jean- Baptiste Denys, personal physician to Louis XIV of France, on a 15-year-old-boy using blood from a sheep.
1683 — Plot to assassinate King Charles II of Britain and his brother James, Duke of York, is uncovered.
1798 — French forces under Napoleon Bonaparte capture island of Malta.
1897 — Swiss cutlery maker Carl Elsener patents his penknife, later to become known as the Swiss army knife.
1944 — Germans launch flyingbomb attacks against Britain.
1963 — US civil rights leader Medgar Evers is fatally shot in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi.
1963 — One of Hollywood’s costliest failures, Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor, premieres in New York.
1964 — Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and other anti-apartheid leaders are sentenced to life in prison in South Africa.
1976 — A military coup in Uruguay overthrows civilian president Juan Bordaberry, beginning a nine-year dictatorship.
1991 — Boris Yeltsin is elected president of the Russian Republic.
1991 — Mt Pinatubo, a Philippine volcano, erupts for a third time just 14 hours after unleashing a series of explosions that shut down the biggest US air base in Asia.
1994 — Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are found stabbed to death in Brentwood, California; her ex-husband, former American football star OJ Simpson, is later acquitted of their murder.
1999 — NATO troops flood into Kosovo and come face-to-face with Russian troops who seize the airport in Pristina in an unexpected move. The Russian foreign minister calls the Russian deployment a mistake.
2003 — Gregory Peck, one of the last great stars from Hollywood’s golden era, dies aged 87.
2007 — Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convicts former Croatian Serb leader Milan Martic of mass murders, torture and persecution of non-serbs from 1991-95.
2008 — Nepalese officials take control of the main royal palace in Katmandu, a day after deposed King Gyanendra left to begin life as a civilian.
2016 — Unprecedented new details of medieval cities hidden under jungle in Cambodia near Angkor Wat are revealed using lasers, shedding new light on the civilisation behind the world’s largest religious complex.
Today’s Birthdays: George Herbert Walker Bush, former US president (1924-); Anne Frank, German-born diarist (1929-1945); Jim Nabors, US actor-singer (1930-); Chick Corea, US jazz musician (1941-).