Today in History

1189 – Henry II of England, the first of the Plantagenets, dies and is succeeded by Richard I.

1483 – Richard III crowned.

1553 – Edward VI of England dies and is succeeded by Mary I.

1699 – Pirate captain William Kidd, right, is taken into custody at Boston, Massachusetts. He is later hanged in England.

1809 – Pope Pius VII, having excommunicated Napoleon Bonaparte, is taken prisoner by French.

1917 – Arab forces led by TE Lawrence capture port of Aqaba from Turks in World War I.

1923 – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is formed.

1943 – Darwin bombed. The Australian city was bombed 64 times during World War II.

1960 – Seven-year-old Rodger Woodward becomes the first person to survive an unprotected plunge over Niagara Falls after falling out of a boat.

1962 – US novelist and Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner dies. 1964 – The Beatles movie A Hard

Day’s Night premieres in London. 1990 – Bulgarian President Petar Mladenov resigns after charges he called for tanks to crush an antigovernment protest.

1995 – Queensland school bans performance by Papua New Guinea dance group because of their bare breasts.

1996 – Steffi Graf wins her seventh Wimbledon title.

1998 – Roy Rogers, the US singing cowboy star, dies aged 86 in California.

Birthdays

Maximilian, archduke of Austria and emperor of Mexico (1832-1867); Andrei Gromyko, Soviet foreign minister (1909-1989); Dave Allen, Irish comedian (1936-2005); Burt Ward, US actor (1946-).

Yesterday’s Today in History wrongly contained anniversaries from July 6. Today’s are different ones from the same date.