Today in history

1066 - Normans under William the Conqueror defeat English at Battle of Hastings.

1806 - Napoleon Bonaparte defeats Prussia at Jena and Saxony at Auerstadt.

1813 - Bavaria declares war on France.

1884 - The Mahdi takes Omdurman, now Khartoum, in the Sudan.

1930 - Attempted Fascist coup in Finland.

1947 - Air Force test pilot Charles ‘‘Chuck’’ Yeager becomes the first person to break the sound barrier, flying the experimental Bell X-1 rocket plane over Edwards Air Force Base in California.

1967 - Communist terrorist bombs in Hong Kong bring total casualties to 21; British official kidnapped.

1970 - Death toll in Philippines typhoon reaches 783.

1977 - Popular American singer Bing Crosby collapses and dies after a game of golf near Madrid, aged 73.

1995 - Greece lifts its embargo on the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia which agrees to change its flag and declare that it has no claims on Greek territory; A judge orders Italy’s former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to stand trial on corruption charges.

1999 - Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, the father of Tanzanian independence and a symbol of Africa’s hopes as it emerged from the shadow of European colonial rule, dies at 77 of leukaemia.

2002 - Britain suspends the Northern Ireland assembly, saying direct British rule was being introduced over the province because of ‘‘a loss of confidence on both sides of the community’’. It was the fourth suspension since December 1999.

2004 - Bowing to Western pressure, Bosnian Serbs acknowledge that their forces killed more than 7000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995, in what was seen as Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II.

2007 - A landslide triggered by local residents digging for rumoured deposits of gold in an abandoned mine kills at least 21 people and injures 26 in southern Colombia.

2010 - The United States endorses fragile Afghan efforts to negotiate peace with the Taliban, backing off its prior stance that talks with the Taliban were premature until the war is all but won.

2015 - Pope Francis asks for forgiveness for recent sex scandals that have shaken the Vatican – an apparent reference to two cases of priests and gay sex revealed the same month.

Today’s Birthdays:

Eamon de Valera, Irish statesman (1882-1975); Dwight Eisenhower, US general and 34th president (1890-1969).