Today in history
1516 – Turkish Ottoman army vanquishes Arab Mameluke forces north of Aleppo, sealing conquest of Syria.
1572 – The slaughter of French Protestants at the hands of Catholics begins in Paris.
1814 – British forces invade Washington and set fire to the Capitol and the White House.
1821 – The Spanish captain general of Mexico, Juan O’donoju, signs the Treaty of Cordoba, giving Mexico independence.
1932 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly nonstop across the United States, travelling from Los Angeles to New Jersey in 19 hours. 1949 – Nato, the North Americaneuropean military alliance, goes into effect.
1954 – President Getulio Vargas, Brazil’s former dictator who gave up power and later was elected leader, kills himself with a gunshot to the heart soon after resigning amid political and economic turbulence. 1964 – A fireworks explosion in Atlatahuca, Mexico, during a religious celebration kills 45 people.
1968 – France explodes a hydrogen bomb at a South Pacific testing ground and becomes the world’s fifth thermo-nuclear power.
1981 – Mark David Chapman is sentenced in New York to 20 years to life in jail for murder of John Lennon. 1991 – Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of Communist Party and urges its leadership to disband the party. Ukraine becomes the seventh of 15 Soviet republics to declare independence.
1994 – The UN suspends efforts to repatriate Rwandan refugees after Hutu extremists mob the first group to agree to be brought home. 1999 – At least 100,000 public workers march in cities around South Africa, in the largest mass labour action since apartheid ended, to demand wage increases.
2004 – Chechen suicide bombers destroy two Russian airliners, killing 90 passengers and crew.
2012 – A court in Norway finds Anders Behring Breivik, a 33-year-old extremist, guilty of terrorism and premeditated murder for attacks on a government headquarters and a youth camp that left 77 people dead. 2014 – Actor and Oscar-winning director Richard Attenborough dies aged 90.
George Stubbs,
English painter (1724-1806); Angie
Brooks, Liberian diplomat
(1928-2007); Kenny
Baker, English actor,
Star Wars’ R2D2 (1934-2016); UK movie star Rupert Grint (1988-).