TODAY IN HISTORY 30 BC
Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves minor victory over Octavian, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to Octavian’s invasion of Egypt.
1291 1423
Hundred Years’ War: Battle of Cravant - the French army is defeated at Cravant on the banks of the river Yonne.
1451
Jacques Coeur is arrested by order of Charles VII of France.
1655
Russo-Polish War (16541667): The Russian army enters the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Vilnius, which it holds for six years.
1658
Aurangzeb appoints himself Mongol emperor in India.
1737
Prince Frederick of Wales escapes English court.
1741
Charles Albert of Bavaria invades Upper Austria and Bohemia.
1751
Fire in Stockholm destroys 1,000 houses.
1865
The first narrow gauge mainline railway in the world opens at Grandchester, Australia.
1874
Dr Patrick Francis Healy becomes the first AfricanAmerican to be inaugurated as president of Georgetown University or of any predominantly white university in the United States.
1879
The first cable connection between South Africa and Europe is laid by the British electrical engineer Charles Tilston Bright as part of his project to link the British Empire with growing telecommunications technologies.
1914
German Emperor Wilhelm II threatens war, orders Russia to demobilise.
1919
The Weimar Constitution establishing the German Republic is adopted.
1937
Politburo enables Operative Order 00447: Execute 193,000 Russians.
1945 1972
Operation Motorman: The British Army uses 12,000 soldiers supported by tanks and bulldozers to re-take the ‘no-go areas’ controlled by the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
1978
Gunman shoots his way into Iraqi Embassy in Paris and kills a French police inspector and an Iraqi security agent, before taking eight persons hostage. He surrenders to the French police after almost nine hours.
1982
Car and bus collision near Beaune, France kills 53.
1987
A rare, class F-4 tornado rips through Edmonton, Alberta, killing 27 people and causing US$330mn in damage.
1988
Thirty-two people are killed and 1,674 injured when a bridge at the Sultan Abdul Halim ferry terminal collapses in Butterworth, Malaysia.
1991
Senate votes to allow women to fly combat aircraft.
1994
Sergei Bubka pole vaults his 35th world record (6.14 m).
1999
Discovery Program: Lunar Prospector - NASA intentionally crashes the spacecraft into the Moon, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the Moon’s surface.
2007
Operation Banner, the presence of the British Army in Northern Ireland, and longest-running British Army operation ever, comes to an end.
Egyptian Mamelukken occupies Akko, crusaders driven out of Palestine.
Pierre Laval, fugitive former leader of Vichy France, surrenders to Allied soldiers in Austria.