Today in history
1000 – Viking explorer Leif Ericson sights ‘‘Vinland,’’ possibly Newfoundland.
1595 – Cambrai, France, falls to Spanish.
1701 – The Collegiate School of Connecticut – later Yale University – is chartered in New Haven, United States.
1760 – Russians capture Berlin. 1776 – A group of Spanish missionaries settles in present-day San Francisco.
1801 – Turkey formally recovers Egypt by treaty with France.
1806 – Prussia declares war on France.
1967 – New Zealand abandons the ‘‘six o’clock swill’’ – the compulsory 6pm closing of all bars, blamed for widespread closing-hour binge drinking – after a referendum calls for it to be scrapped.
1987 – Powerful car bomb explodes near mosque in Afghanistan capital of Kabul, killing 27 people and wounding 35.
1996 – Soldiers loyal to Afghanistan’s deposed government halt the Taliban advance and break through its lines.
1998 – After 15 years of disgrace, Ariel Sharon returns to the centre of power as foreign minister of Israel in charge of peace talks with the Palestinians.
2006 – The UN Security Council formally nominates South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon to succeed Kofi Annan as United Nations secretary-general.
2007 – The impoverished Nama tribe wins back diamond-rich land confiscated by a government mining company more than 80 years ago, ending South Africa’s longest running court case.
2008 – An explosives-laden vehicle blows up an anti-terrorist squad building and wounds at least four people in a heavily guarded police complex in Pakistan’s capital.
2009 – A beaming President Barack Obama says he was both honoured and humbled to win the Nobel Peace Prize and would accept it as a ‘‘call to action’’ to work with other nations to solve the world’s most pressing problems.
2010 – Chile’s trapped miners cheer and embrace each other as a drill punches into their underground chamber, opening a way out with a spray of rock and dust from the collapsed mine where they have been stuck for an agonizing 66 days.
2011 – Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk appears to clinch a second term in office for his centrist, pro-european Civic Platform party in parliamentary elections, a historic first in the country’s post-communist era.
Today’s Birthdays:
John Lennon, British pop singer (1940-1980); Sharon Osbourne, actress (1952-), Sean Lennon, British singer (1975– ).