Today in history
1556 - France’s King Henry II renews war against Hapsburgs in Italy.
1687 - English mathematician Isaac Newton’s PRINCIPIA is published by Royal Society, outlining his laws of motion and universal gravitation.
1796 - British force captures island of Elba.
1811 - Venezuela becomes the first South American country to declare its independence from Spain.
1830 - The French launch invasion of Algeria and take Algiers.
1902 - The Australian cricket team wins the only Test played in Bramall Lane, Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, by 143 runs.
1943 - A German offensive on the Soviet front begins with Battle of Kursk in World War II.
1946 - Bikini swimsuits are modelled for the first time in Paris Louis Reard, a former engineer, named it after Bikini Atoll, where US nuclear tests were being held. Reard said he thought his two- piece suits would be ‘‘highly explosive’’.
1954 - Elvis Presley’s first commercial recording session takes place at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee where he records That’s All Right (Mama).
1960 - Congolese national army mutinies. 1967 - Israel annexes Gaza. 1969 - The Rolling Stones give a free concert in Hyde Park, London, in memory of Brian Jones, who died two days before.
1973 - The government of Rwanda is overthrown in a military coup and General Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, comes to power.
1992 - The first UN observers arrive in Somalia to monitor a ceasefire in Mogadishu, ravaged by clan warfare.
1994 - Up to 150 Haitians drown when an overcrowded boat capsizes and spills 200 refugees trying to flee to the US.
1996 - In Dhaka, Bangladesh, rising floodwaters force more than 70,000 people from their homes and kill at least six children.
2003 - Two Chechen female suicide bombers kill themselves and at least 14 others at Tushino airfield on the outskirts of Moscow, where an annual outdoor rock-music festival was being held.
2005 - Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government criticises the US military for killing up to 17 civilians in an airstrike and orders an immediate investigation.
2011 - The News of the World faces claims it hacked into a missing 13-year-old’s phone messages, possibly hampering a police inquiry into her disappearance. Today’s Birthdays: Cecil Rhodes, English statesman and Central Africa pioneer (1853-1902); Jean Cocteau, French author- filmmaker (1889-1963); Edie Falco, US actress (1963-).