Today in history

1765 - England’s Parliament passes unpopular Stamp Act to raise revenue in American colonies.

1794 - United States Congress passes law prohibiting American ships from supplying slaves to other countries.

1848 - After an insurrection, the Venetian Republic declares its independence from Austria.

1882 - US Congress outlaws polygamy.

1888 - A meeting is held at Anderton’s Hotel, London, aimed at setting up the English Football League.

1904 - The first colour picture appears in a newspaper, the Daily Illustrated Mirror in New York.

1919 - The world’s first international airline service is launched, a weekly flight between Paris and Brussels.

1958 - Film star Elizabeth Taylor’s producer husband Michael Todd is killed in a plane crash.

1960 - Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes patent the laser.

1978 - Karl Wallenda, 73-year-old patriarch of The Flying Wallendas high-wire act, falls to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotels in Puerto Rico.

1979 - Sir Richard Sykes, Britain’s ambassador to the Netherlands, is shot dead by Irish terrorists in the Hague.

1993 - Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia attack an ethnic Vietnamese fishing village, killing 35.

1994 - Russian Airbus A-310 crashes in Siberia en route to Hong Kong, killing all 75 people aboard.

1996 - The United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia issues the first indictments for crimes against Serbs, charging three Bosnian Muslims and a Bosnian Croat with murder, torture and rape.

2007 - A Katyusha rocket explodes 50 metres from UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon at a news conference in Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone, rattling the building and leaving a crater outside, but injuring no-one.

2013 - Israel and Turkey agree to restore full diplomatic relations after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a dramatic turnaround, apologises in a phone call for a deadly naval raid against a Gazabound international flotilla.

2016 - Islamic extremists kill 31 people in the Belgian capital Brussels in bomb attacks at the airport and a subway. More than 270 are wounded.

Today’s birthdays:

Kaiser Wilhelm I, Emperor of Germany (1797-1888); Stephen Sondheim, US composer (1930-); William Shatner, Canadian actor (1931-); Roger Whittaker, British singer-songwriter (1936-); Andrew Lloyd Webber, British composer (1948-); Reese Witherspoon, US actress (1976-).