Today in history
1549 — France declares war on England.
1588 — The English fleet batters and scatters the Spanish Armada off France, in the first major naval gun battle in history.
1876 — Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
1918 — The British, with Australian and Canadian forces, begin an offensive on the Western Front, causing the German lines to crumble.
1940 — Germany begins heavy bombing of Britain in World War II.
1953 — United States and South Korea sign mutual defence treaty.
1963 — Britain’s ‘‘Great Train Robbery’’ takes place as thieves make off with £2.6 million in bank notes.
1965 — City of Singapore withdraws from Federation of Malaysia and becomes an independent state.
1967 — Foreign ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand sign a declaration leading to the formation of the Association of South East Asian Nations.
1974 — United States president Richard Nixon announces on television that he is resigning after the Watergate scandal.
1980 — A Turkish military court sentences 22 people to death on charges from the December 1978 rioting in Kahramanmaras that killed more than 100 people.
1990 — Iraq formally annexes Kuwait and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher orders British air and naval forces to the Gulf.
1991 — Lebanese kidnappers free British TV producer John Mccarthy after holding him hostage for five years.
1994 — Israel and Jordan open first road linking the two nations.
1995 — The ‘‘Aids gang’’, a group of bank robbers who cannot be jailed under Italian law because they have Aids, are freed again after their fourth holdup in three weeks.
1996 — Boris Yeltsin begins his second term as Russian president.
2000 — A bomb rips through a crowded underground walkway in central Moscow, killing 12 people and injuring 108 others.
2011 — Australian heroine Nancy Wake, 98, dies in London after saving thousands of Allied lives during World War II by setting up escape routes and sabotaging German installations.
2015 — Australia loses the Fourth Ashes Test against England at Trent Bridge, and captain Michael Clarke announces he will retire from international cricket at the end of the series. Today’s Birthdays: Dustin Hoffman, US actor (1937-); The Edge (Dave Howell Evans), Irish guitarist of U2 (1961-); Roger Federer, Swiss tennis player (1981-); Princess Beatrice Elizabeth Mary (1988-).