Today in history
1227 - Death of the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan.
1743 - First rules of boxing approved – they were drafted by John Broughton, third heavyweight boxing champion of England.
1812 - Russian forces are defeated at Smolensk, which is occupied by French.
1896 - France annexes Madagascar whose external treaties with other states are annulled.
1914 - US President Woodrow Wilson proclaims American neutrality in World War I; Germany declares war on Russia.
1939 - Soviet Union and Germany sign commercial agreement.
1968 - More than 100 women and children are killed when a landslide sweeps two sightseeing buses into rain-swollen river on Honshu Island in Japan.
1987 - British authorities say Rudolf Hess took his own life by wrapping an electrical cord around his neck.
1991 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin calls for a general strike to protest against the ouster of Mikhail Gorbachev.
1996 - In Pakistan, gunmen fire on a group of Shi’ite worshippers in central Punjab province, killing 18 people and injuring 100.
1997 - Typhoon Winnie begins a sweep through Asia, killing 28 in Taiwan and becoming the costliest storm to hit China in a decade, causing at least $US2.6 billion in damage and killing as many as 56 people.
2002 - Pope John Paul, speaking to some 2.7 million people, his largest crowd ever in Poland, warns that the new millennium is threatened by an onslaught of evil.
2003 - Fourteen European tourists kidnapped in late February and March by Algerian Islamic militants are freed in northern Mali.
2007 - Two men hijack a Turkish passenger plane bound for Istanbul, holding several people hostage for more than four hours before surrendering, officials said.
2008 - Pervez Musharraf resigns as the president of Pakistan.
2011 - Veteran ABC news gatherers Paul Lockyer, Gary Ticehurst and John Bean are killed in a helicopter crash at South Australia’s Lake Eyre while working on a story.
2015 - Indonesian crews locate the bodies of all 54 people in the wreckage of Trigana Air Service Flight 257 in a remote area of Papua. Today’s Birthdays: Meriwether Lewis, US explorer (1774-1809) Roman Polanski, Frenchborn film director (1933-); Robert Redford, US actor (1937-); Patrick Swayze, US actor (1952-2009); Christian Slater, US actor (1969-); Edward Norton, US actor (1969-), Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love (1992-).