Today in history
1600 - Philosopher Giordano Bruno is burned alive at Campo de’ Fiori in Rome, charged with heresy.
1691 - Thomas Neale is granted an English patent for the American postal service.
1876 - Sardines are first canned by Julius Wolff in Eastport, Maine.
1880 - Tsar Alexander II of Russia survives an assassination attempt.
1882 - The first test cricket match is played at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
1904 - Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly premieres in Milan.
1926 - An avalanche buries 75 people in Sap Gulch, Bingham, Utah; 40 die.
1933 - The first issue of American news magazine Newsweek is published.
1936 - The world’s first superhero, The Phantom, a cartoon strip by Lee Falk, makes his first appearance in comics.
1943 - New York Yankee Joe Dimaggio enlists in the US army.
1949 - Chaim Weitzman is elected the first president of Israel.
1950 - Thirty-one people die in a train crash in Rockville Centre, New York.
1957 - A fire at a home for the elderly in Warrenton, Missouri, kills 72 people.
1967 - The Beatles release Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever.
1972 - The British Parliament votes to join the European Common Market.
1974 - Forty-nine people die in a stampede for seats at a football match in Cairo, Egypt.
1976 - Richard Hadlee takes 7-23 in a match-winning spell of bowling for New Zealand in their cricket test against India.
1978 - Twelve people are killed and 30 wounded by a Provisional IRA incendiary bomb at the La Mon Restaurant near Belfast.
1979 - China invades Vietnam, marking the start of the Sinovietnamese War.
1982 - Sri Lanka’s first cricket test match starts, against England.
1985 - The first day-night cricket game is held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground between Australia and England.
1988 - US Lieutenant Colonel William Higgins is kidnapped by Lebanese terrorists and later killed.
1989 - A six-week study of the Arctic atmosphere shows no ozone ‘‘hole’’.
1996 - Garry Kasparov defeats Deep Blue 4-2 in chess.
2012 - About 70 ancient Olympic artefacts are stolen from the Archaeological Museum of Greece.
Today’s Birthdays:
Michael Jordan, US basketball player (1963-); Paris Hilton, heiress and television personality (1981-); Joseph Gordon-levitt, US actor (1981-); Ed Sheeran, English singer (1991-).