Today in History

781BC – Oldest Chinese recording of a solar eclipse.

1411 – The people of Roquefort are granted a monopoly on the ripening of their sheeps’ cheese.

1647 – Parliamentary army takes Charles I prisoner during the English Civil War.

1783 – The Montgolfier brothers fly a hot-air balloon in public for the first time, with no passengers, on a

10-minute flight in Annonay, France.

1878 – Turkey turns Cyprus over to the British.

1913 – Suffragette Emily Davison, left, steps in front of King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby. She dies of her injuries four days later.

1919 – US Congress passes the 19th amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote.

1942 – The Battle of Midway begins. The four-day air and sea battle hobbled Japan’s naval supremacy in the Pacific.

1943 – The Cromwell-Dunedin express derails at Hyde in Central Otago, killing 21 passengers.

1944 – Allied forces enter Rome. 1945 – US, Soviet Union, Britain and France agree to divide up occupied Germany.

1984 – Indian troops attack the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar to flush out militants. Hundreds died in the fighting.

1989 – Chinese troops clear Tiananmen Square, killing or arresting thousands of student protesters; Poland’s Solidarity party comes to power in Eastern Europe’s first partially free elections for 40 years.

1993 – The UN Security Council authorises the United States and its allies to use air strikes against Serbian forces besieging six Muslim enclaves in Bosnia.

1995 – The All Blacks set a world record that still stands for the highest score in an international rugby match, beating Japan 145-17 in South Africa.

2003 – US ‘‘domestic diva’’ Martha Stewart is charged with securities fraud and obstruction of justice. She was jailed the following year for five months.