Today in history
1596 Turks under Mohammed III defeat Austrian Archduke Maximillian’s forces near Erlau, Hungary.
1641 Great Irish Massacre occurs after the discovery of a conspiracy against the British.
1864 Forces led by Union Major General Samuel Curtis repelled Confederate Major General Sterling Price’s army in the Civil War Battle of Westport in Missouri.
1941 The Walt Disney animated feature Dumbo, about a young circus elephant who learns how to fly, premieres in New York.
1942 British Eighth Army attacks Axis forces to begin Battle of El Alamein in Egypt during World War II.
1954 Britain, France, the United States and Soviet Union agree to end occupation of Germany.
1962 Soviet Union warns that a US blockade of arms shipments to Cuba may risk a thermonuclear war.
1973 Israeli military command announces that Israel and Egypt have agreed to a new ceasefire in the Middle East war.
1996 A historian reveals that the Swiss bank accounts of presumed Holocaust victims were used to settle Switzerland’s postwar compensation disputes with Poland and Hungary.
1998 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat agree on a breakthrough land-for-peace West Bank accord after eight days of negotiations in the US.
2001 Indonesia’s parliament passes a bill granting the rebellious province of Irian Jaya sweeping autonomy, a greater share of resource revenues and a new name – Papua.
2005 Hurricane Wilma punishes Mexico’s Caribbean coastline for a second day, ripping away storefronts, peeling back roofs and forcing tourists and residents trapped in hotels and shelters to scramble to higher floors. At least seven people are killed.
2011 Cries of panic and horror fill the air as a 7.2-magnitude earthquake strikes eastern Turkey, killing at least 138 people as buildings pancaked and crumpled into rubble. The death toll was expected to rise as rescuers sifted through the rubble.
2013 German Chancellor Angela Merkel complains to President Barack Obama after learning that US intelligence may have targeted her mobile phone.
2014 Mali reports its first case of Ebola, marking a major setback for West African efforts to contain the deadly virus that has now affected six countries in the region and left nearly 5000 dead.
Today’s birthdays:
Johnny Carson, US former The Tonight Show host (1925-2005); Michael Crichton, US author (1942-2008); Weird Al Yankovic, US musical parodist (1959-).