Today in history
On June 29, 1613, London’s original Globe Theatre, where many of Shakespeare’s plays were performed, was destroyed by a fire sparked by a cannon shot during a performance of “Henry VIII.”
In 1520, Montezuma II, the ninth and last emperor of the Aztecs, died in Tenochtitlan (taynohch-TEET’-lahn) under unclear circumstances (some say he was killed by his own subjects; others, by the Spanish).
In 1767, Britain approved the Townshend Revenue Act, which imposed import duties on glass, paint, oil, lead, paper and tea shipped to the American colonies. (Colonists bitterly protested, prompting Parliament to repeal the duties — except for tea.)
In 1776, the Virginia state constitution was adopted, and Patrick Henry was made governor.
In 1880, France annexed Tahiti, which became a French colony on December 30, 1880.
In 1927, the first trans-Pacific airplane flight was completed as U.S. Army Air Corps Lt. Lester J. Maitland and Lt. Albert F. Hegenberger arrived at Wheeler Field in Hawaii aboard the Bird of Paradise, an Atlantic-Fokker C-2, after flying 2,400 miles from Oakland, California, in 25 hours, 50 minutes.
In 1933, actor-director Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle died in New York at age 46.
In 1946, authorities in British-ruled Palestine arrested more than 2,700 Jews in an attempt to stamp out extremists.
In 1970, the United States ended a two-month military offensive into Cambodia.
In 1974, Isabel Martinez de Peron was sworn in as acting president of Argentina, two days before the death of her ailing husband, President Juan Peron.
In 1995, the space shuttle Atlantis and the Russian Mir space station linked in orbit, beginning a historic five-day voyage as a single ship. A department store in Seoul (sohl), South Korea, collapsed, killing at least 500 people. Actress Lana Turner died in Century City, California, at age 74.
In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled, 5-3, that President George W. Bush’s plan to try Guantanamo Bay detainees in military tribunals violated U.S. and international law.
In 2009, disgraced financier Bernard Madoff received a 150-year sentence for his multibillion-dollar fraud.
Ten years ago: China and Taiwan signed a tariff-slashing trade pact that boosted economic ties and further eased political tensions six decades after the rivals split amid civil war. Talk show host Larry King announced he would step down from his CNN show in the autumn after 25 years on the air.
Five years ago: A deeply divided Supreme Court upheld the use of a controversial drug, midazolam (mih-DAZ’-oh-lam), in lethal-injection executions. (Executions that employed midazolam took longer than usual and raised concerns that the drug did not perform its intended task of putting inmates into a coma-like sleep.) A car bomb killed Egypt’s chief prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, in the country’s first assassination of a senior official in 25 years. Stanley Cup winners Nicklas Lidstrom, Chris Pronger and Sergei Fedorov and former NHL star Phil Housley were among the seven newcomers in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
One year ago: Former New York City police detective Luis Alvarez, who was a leader in the fight to maintain the Sept. 11 Victims Compensation Fund, died of cancer at the age of 53. In Major League Baseball’s first game in Europe, the New York Yankees outlasted the Boston Red Sox 17-13 in a London game that stretched for four hours and 42 minutes, just three minutes shy of the record for a nine-inning game.