Today in history
1702 - Queen Anne ascends British throne after the death of King William III.
1722 - Afghanistan’s Mir Mahmud starts war against Persia.
1865 - Canal is begun in the Netherlands to connect Amsterdam with North Sea.
1889 - Death of John Ericsson, Swedish-born United States ship designer and inventor of the first successful screw propeller.
1917 - Riots and strikes in St Petersburg, marking start of Russian Revolution; Death of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German soldier, inventor and pioneer in airship development.
1930 - Mohandas Gandhi begins his campaign of civil disobedience against British rule in India.
1942 - Japanese forces capture Rangoon, Burma, during World War II.
1948 - The US Supreme Court rules that religious instruction in public schools violates the constitution.
1954 - The US and Japan sign a mutual defence agreement.
1965 - The US lands 3500 Marines in South Vietnam.
1966 - The Nelson Column in Dublin is destroyed in an IRA bomb explosion.
1969 - Soviet Union puts its Far East army on alert as warning to China after frontier clash on Ussuri River.
1988 - United Nations Security Council speakers condemn South Africa’s ban on anti-apartheid organisations.
1992 - Commanders of a planned 14,000 UN peacekeeping force arrive in Belgrade.
1999 - The US Energy Department fires a Taiwanese-born scientist suspected of handing over nuclear missile technology to China in the 1980s; New York Yankees baseball star Joe Dimaggio dies at age 84.
2001 - Dame Ninette de Valois, founder of the Royal Ballet, dies in London, aged 102.
2006 - The European Union agrees to end a 10-year ban on British beef that was imposed on Britain at the height of the 1990s mad cow disease crisis.
2014 - Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappears while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 239 people aboard; Veteran actress Wendy Hughes dies of cancer, aged 61.
2015 - US President Barack Obama speaks at the 50th anniversary commemoration of a historic civilrights confrontation in Selma, Alabama, telling a cheering crowd their march ‘‘is not yet finished’’.
Today’s Birthdays:
Kenneth Grahame, British author of The Wind In The Willows (1859-1932); Otto Hahn, German chemist who co-discovered nuclear fission (1879-1968); Cyd Charisse, US actress-dancer (1921-2008).