TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 2018

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY:

0455 - Rome was sacked by the Vandal army.

1487 - The War of the Roses ended with the Battle of Stoke.

1567 - Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned in Lochleven Castle in Scotland.

1815 - Napoleon defeated the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny, Netherlands.

1840 - New Zealand becomes a dependency of New South Wales.

1845 - Explorer Ludwig Leichhardt discovers and names the Mitchell River in north Queensland.

1869 - Captain Charles Sturt, one of Australia’s great explorers, dies.

1907 - The Russian czar dissolved the Duma in St Petersburg.

1925 - France accepted a German proposal for a security pact.

1932 - The ban on Nazi storm troopers was lifted by the von Papen government in Germany.

1940 - Marshal Henri-Philippe Petain became the prime minister of the Vichy government of occupied France.

1955 - Pope Pius XII excommunicated Argentine President Juan Peron. The ban was lifted eight years later.

1955 - Argentine naval officers launched an attack on President Juan Peron’s headquarters. The revolt was suppressed by the army.

1961 - Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union while in Paris, travelling with the Leningrad Kirov Ballet.

1976 - In Soweto, thousands of school children revolted against the South African government’s plan to enforce Afrikaans as the language for instruction in black schools.

1977 - Leonid Brezhnev was named the first Soviet president of the USSR. He was the first person to hold the post of president and Communist Party General Secretary.

1985 - Willie Banks broke the world record for the triple jump with a leap of 58 feet, 11-1/2 inches in the US championships in Indianapolis, IN.

1996 - Russian voters had their first independent presidential election. Boris Yeltsin was the winner after a run-off.