Today in history

1511 — Britain’s King Henry VIII joins Holy League and enters European politics.

1553 — Lady Jane Grey goes on trial for treason in England. She had been queen of England for nine days.

1789 — American inventor Benjamin Franklin writes a letter to a friend in which he says, ‘‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.’’

1832 — The first streetcar — a horse-drawn vehicle called the John Mason — goes into operation in New York City.

1881 — Charles J. Guiteau goes on trial for assassinating US President James A. Garfield.

1849 — Voters in California ratified the state’s original constitution.

1909 — 259 men and boys were killed when fire erupted inside a coal mine in Cherry, Illinois.

1941 — Britain’s finest aircraft carrier, the Ark Royal, is torpedoed by a German submarine and sinks off Strait of Gibraltar the next day.

1942 — President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure lowering the minimum draft age from 21 to 18.

1961 — Congo government asks United Nations to assist in restoring law and order in Katanga Province.

1975 — World Health Organization announces that Asia is free of smallpox for first time in history.

1985 — The Nevado de Ruiz volcano in Colombia erupts, sending an avalanche of mud and rock slamming into the town of Armero. About 25,000 people die.

1995 — A bomb rips through a building filled with American and Saudi military personnel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing six.

2006 — Voters in South Ossetia overwhelmingly approve a referendum calling for independence from Georgia.

2010 — Pro-democracy hero Aung San Suu Kyi walks free after more than seven years under house arrest in Myanmar, and is welcomed by thousands of cheering supporters outside the decaying lakefront villa that had been her prison.

2013 — Ultra-traditionalist Roman Catholics in Argentina openly challenge Pope Francis by disrupting one of his favourite events, an interfaith ceremony in the Metropolitan Cathedral mean to promote religious harmony on the anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust.

2014 — Details emerge of an agreement between militant leaders from the Islamic State group and Alqaida at a meeting in northern Syria to stop fighting each other and work together against common opponents.

Today’s Birthdays:

Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish writer (1850-1894); Oskar Werner, Austrian actor-director (1922-1984); Whoopi Goldberg, US actress (1955—); Joe Mantegna, U.S. actor (1947—).