Today in History

1471 – England’s King Henry VI is murdered on orders from the future Edward IV.

1541 – Spaniards on gold-seeking expedition, led by Hernando de Soto, become the first Europeans to see the Mississippi River.

1542 – De Soto dies while searching for gold along the Mississippi.

1840 – William Hobson declares British sovereignty over New Zealand.

1927 – US aviator Charles

Lindbergh, left, lands in Paris, completing the first solo aircraft flight across Atlantic Ocean.

1945 – Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart are married.

1956 – First hydrogen bomb is exploded by United States over Bikini Atoll in Pacific.

1989 – Students occupying Tiananmen Square in China reject government ultimatum to leave. 1991 – Rajiv Gandhi, candidate for prime minister of India, is assassinated by Sri Lanka’s separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels in a suicide bomb attack in Madras.

1998 – After weeks of protests and riots in Indonesia, President Suharto resigns, ending a 32-year reign.

2003 – An earthquake measuring 6.8 strikes Algeria’s northern coast, 70km east of Algiers. At least 2200 people are killed in the initial earthquake and in aftershocks.

2009 – The Gurkhas, Nepalese warriors who have served in the British military for two centuries, win automatic right to settle in Britain, after years of lawsuits and lobbying.