Today in History

1527 – Florence becomes a republic.

1532 – Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro lands with a small band of soldiers on the northern coast of Peru; Sir Thomas More resigns as Lord Chancellor of England. 1568 – Mary Queen of Scots,

right, flees to England.

1596 - Spanish stronghold of La Fere, in what is now northern France, capitulates to French.

1763 – Samuel Johnson meets future biographer James Boswell.

1920 – Joan of Arc is canonised in Rome.

1929 – The first Academy Awards are presented during a banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

1975 – Japanese climber Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mt Everest.

1989 – Hundreds of thousands arrive in Beijing to support students fasting for freedom in Tiananmen Square.

1995 – Japanese police arrest doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara in connection with the nerve-gas attack that killed 12 on Tokyo’s subways two months earlier.

2003 – Twenty-nine people are killed and about 100 others injured in five nearly simultaneous suicide bombing attacks in Casablanca, Morocco’s largest city and commercial centre.

2010 – Iraq’s electoral commission affirms the narrow victory of a Sunni-backed bloc in the March vote after a partial recount undercut the Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s claims of fraud in the tally.

Birthdays

Maria Agnesi, first woman to become a known mathematician (1718-1799); Henry Fonda, US actor (1905-1982); HE Bates, English author (1905-1974); Woody Herman, US jazz musician (1913-1987); Janet Jackson, US pop singer (1966-), Pierce Brosnan, actor (1953-).