Today in history
1513 - In searching for the Fountain of Youth, Spaniard Ponce de Leon discovers Florida, but does not realise it is part of mainland North America.
1580 - Seventh War of Religion breaks out in France.
1792 - United States Congress passes the Coinage Act, which authorises establishment of the US Mint and allows the Government to make its own money.
1860 - The first Italian Parliament meets at Turin.
1915 - An estimated 2500 New Zealand and Australian troops rioted in a red-light district of Cairo, Egypt, in what was called the Battle of Wazzir. It reportedly began in retaliation for the spread of venereal disease, amid rumours pimps had stabbed soldiers.
1917 - US President Woodrow Wilson summons special session of Congress to declare war upon Germany.
1932 - Aviator Charles Lindbergh pays US$50,000 ransom in a New York cemetery to a man who promises to return his kidnapped son.
1937 - South Africa prohibits political activity by foreigners in Southwest Africa.
1982 - Argentina seizes the disputed Falkland Islands from Britain. Britain takes the islands back the following June.
1986 - A bomb rips hole in TWA jetliner over southern Greece, and the blast blows a man, woman and child out of the plane to their deaths. The plane flying between Rome and Athens was carrying 121 people.
1991 - The Iraqi army defeats rebellions by Kurds in northern Iraq and by Shiite Arabs in the south.
1998 - Maurice Papon, a Vichy official and later Cabinet minister in postwar France, is sentenced to 10 years in jail for deporting Jews during WWII.
2005 - Pope John Paul II, who helped topple communism in Europe and left a deeply conservative stamp on the church that he led for 26 years, dies at age 84 in his Vatican apartment, ending a long public struggle against debilitating illness.
2009 - Anxiously assembled at the most perilous moment for the global economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the world’s financial powers pledge more than US$1 trillion for emergency loans to combat spreading chaos.
2015 - France’s parliament moves to make it a crime to advertise clothes using anorexic models in a bid to crack down on the glorification of dangerously thin women. Today’s birthdays:
Charlemagne, Emperor of the West (742-814); Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer (1805-1875); William Holman Hunt, English artist (1827-1910); Buddy Ebsen, US actor (1908-2003); Sir Alec Guinness, British actor (1914-2000); Emmylou Harris, US country singer (1947-).