Today in History

1795 – The first jackasses arrive in America through Boston Harbour as a gift from the King of Spain to President George Washington, for mating with mares to produce America’s first native mules.

1947 – United States actors Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, right, fly to Washington to protest against alleged violations of personal freedom by the House Un-American Activities Committee in hearings on Communist infiltration in Hollywood.

1955 – Republic of South Vietnam is proclaimed.

1962 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev offers to withdraw missiles from Cuba if US removes bases in Turkey, but is rebuffed.

1979 – South Korea’s President Park Chung-Hee is slain by his friend Kim Jae Kyu, the head of the Korean intelligence agency.

1994 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordan’s Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali sign a peace treaty, ending 46 years of hostility.

1996 – As eastern Zaire slides into chaos, the United Nations evacuates aid workers from the camp in Bukavu, leaving half a million Hutu refugees from Rwanda to fend for themselves.

1998 – Days after signing a peace accord with the Palestinians, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu beats a no-confidence vote in Parliament.

1999 – Britain’s House of Lords votes to end the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in Britain’s upper chamber of Parliament.

2002 – Elite Russian counterterrorism forces storm a theatre in Moscow, the Russian capital, after flooding it with knockout gas, bringing an end to a hostage crisis that had begun with the theatre’s October 23 seizure by more than 50 Chechen guerrillas. At least 119 of the 750 hostages die.

Birthdays

Georges Jacques Danton, French revolutionary leader (1759-1794); Bob Hoskins, British actor (1942-2014); Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state and former US first lady (1947-); Keith Urban, Australian country singer (1967-).