TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY is Thursday, May 29, 2014. On this day:

1453 - Constantinople fell to Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, ending the Byzantine Empire.

1660 - Charles II was restored to the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth.

1861 - George Goyder, responsible for the controversial “Goyder Line”, becomes Surveyor-General of South Australia.

1874 - Australian explorer Giles finishes his last keg of water on his desperate attempt to reach his base camp.

1880 - The Great Hall of Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building is opened to the public for the first time.

1912 - Fifteen women were dismissed from their jobs at the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia, PA, for dancing the Turkey Trot while on the job.

1914 - One of shipping’s greatest peace-time disasters occurs as the Empress of Ireland collides with a Norwegian freighter, killing over 1000.

1917 - Tasmania’s coat of arms is approved by Royal Warrant from King George V.

1953 - Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became first men to reach the top of Mount Everest.

1973 - Tom Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.

1974 - U.S. President Nixon agreed to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts.

1985 - Thirty-nine people were killed and 400 were injured in a riot at a European Cup soccer match in Brussels, Belgium.

1988 - President Reagan began his first visit to the Soviet Union in Moscow.

1990 - Boris Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian republic by the Russian parliament.

1999 - Space shuttle Discovery completed the first docking with the International Space Station.

2000 - Fiji’s military took control of the nation and declared martial law following a coup attempt by indigenous Fijians in mid-May.