Today in history
1497 – Juan Borgia, the son of pope Alexander VI, is murdered, allegedly by his power-hungry brother Cesare.
1645 – Parliamentarian New Model Army under Oliver Cromwell routs Royalists at Naseby in England, deciding the Civil War.
1923 – Aleksandur Stamboliysky, popular Bulgarian political leader, is assassinated after a military coup.
1940 – German forces occupy Paris.
1941 – US President Franklin D Roosevelt orders freezing of German and Italian assets in United States.
1949 – Vietnamese state is established at Saigon under former emperor Bao Dai.
1959 – United States agrees to provide Greece with nuclear information and supply ballistic rockets.
1962 – European Space Research Organisation is established in Paris.
1967 – US Mariner spacecraft is launched toward Venus to discover if the planet can support life.
1975 – Soviet Union launches its second spacecraft in six days toward Venus for October rendezvous designed to land one or two capsules on planet.
1980 – United States rejects European call for participation of Palestine Liberation Organisation in Middle East peace talks.
1982 – Argentine forces on the Falkland Islands surrender to the British, ending a 10-week war.
1984 – New Zealand prime minister Robert Muldoon calls a surprise snap election, leading to his defeat at the polls a month later.
1987 – Pope John Paul II ends weeklong pilgrimage to his native Poland with stern lecture about human rights to nation’s Communist leadership.
1997 – Pol Pot is reported in Cambodia to be fleeing from the Khmer Rouge guerrillas he once commanded.
1999 – NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo discover the first mass grave, believed to contain 81 bodies, as Serb troops withdraw leaving the houses of ethnic Albanians in flames.
2003 – East Timor approves a $1.5 billion natural gas development plan for a pipeline to be built. It will be the largest source of income for impoverished East Timor.
2005 – President Thabo Mbeki fires his deputy and heir apparent who was implicated in a corruption scandal, throwing open the question of who will become the next leader of South Africa when Mbeki steps down in 2009.
2012 – A rock star welcome greeted Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi as she embarked on her first trip to Europe in 24 years, but after a whirlwind of standing ovations, receptions and speeches it all became too much as the 66-year-old Nobel Laureate falls ill during a news conference in Switzerland.