This Day in History
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1994: American serial killer John Wayne Gacy — whose murders of 33 boys and young men in the 1970s shocked his suburban Chicago community where he was known for his performances as a clown at charitable events and children’s parties — is executed at age 52.
Other Events
1496: Christopher Columbus concludes his second visit to the Western Hemisphere as he leaves Hispaniola for Spain.
1629: England’s King Charles I dissolves Parliament and doesn’t call it back for 11 years.
1785: Thomas Jefferson is named US minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin.
1845: The ship, SS Blundell carrying 261 Indians, arrives at Old Harbour Bay.
1848: US Senate ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war with Mexico.
1857: The Indian Mutiny erupts in Meerut in reaction to the increased pace of Westernisation in India and a military crackdown on Indian troops by their British officers.
1862: Britain and France recognise independence of Zanzibar; the US Government issues its first paper money.
1872: American reformer Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman to be nominated for president when the Equal Rights Party selects her as its candidate.
1876: The first successful voice transmission over Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone takes place in Boston as his assistant hears Bell say, “Mr Watson, come here. I want you.”
1880: The Salvation Army arrives in the United States from England.
1893: French colonies of French Guinea and Ivory Coast are formally established.
1922: Strikes break out in Johannesburg, South Africa, and martial law is declared.
1924: US public official J Edgar Hoover is made acting director of the FBI and later in the year becomes director; he builds the agency into a highly effective, even if occasionally controversial, arm of federal law enforcement.
1940: Germany invades Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands during World War II.
1946: Italian women vote for the first time.
1949: Nazi wartime broadcaster Mildred E Gillars, also known as Axis Sally, is convicted in Washington, DC, of treason. She served 12 years in prison.
1959: The Dalai Lama leads a rebellion against Chinese rule. The revolt fails and the Dalai Lama flees to India.
1962: Marvel Comics releases the first issue of The Incredible
Hulk; the towering, muscle-bound antihero was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby.
1969: James Earl Ray pleads guilty in Memphis, Tennessee, to the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, but later repudiates his plea.
1972: Cambodia’s Premier Lon Nol takes over complete control of Cambodian Government.
1975: North Vietnamese troops seize most of South Vietnam’s provincial capital of Ban Me Thuot in central highlands.
1985: Konstantin U Chernenko, who was the Soviet Union’s leader for just 13 months, dies at age 73.
1989: About 100,000 workers move into Iraq’s war-battered southern port of Basra to hasten reconstruction of what once was called the “Venice of the East”.
1990: Georgia becomes the fourth Soviet republic to condemn its annexation to the Soviet Union.
1991: A half-million people rally in Moscow in support of Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
1994: The leader of the South African apartheid homeland Bophutatswana retreats from his capital in the face of a popular uprising, after he tries to boycott participation in South Africa’s first all-races election. Nelson Mandela, whose efforts to end apartheid led to his imprisonment from 1962 to 1990 and which earned him a share, with F W de Klerk, of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, becomes president of South Africa.
1997: Despite US reservations, the Vatican establishes diplomatic relations with Libya.
1998: General Augusto
Pinochet, the 82-year-old former dictator of Chile, steps down from his position as army commander and is sworn in as senator for life under a provision written into the constitution by his regime.
2001: The Nuu-chah-nulth, the largest native tribal group in British Columbia, agree to a treaty with the provincial and federal governments giving the natives a measure of autonomy, a share in the land’s resources, and a large one-time payment.
2002: Candidates allied with independent and far-right Colombian presidential contender Alvaro Uribe post gains in congressional elections amid mounting violence between leftist rebel groups and Government forces. *American FBI agent Robert Hanssen is sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to spying for Moscow. He was one of the Soviet Union’s and Russia’s most valuable double agents and the most damaging spy ever to penetrate the FBI.
2005: After years of denials, Pakistan admits its top nuclear scientist sold centrifuges to Iran, though it sticks by its claim it knew nothing of his activities and insists he will not be turned over to another country for prosecution.
2006: Six young Japanese are found dead from asphyxiation in a car north-west of Tokyo — victims of a surge in suicide pacts arranged over the Internet.
2007: Year-long talks on the future status of Kosovo between Serbia’s Government and the disputed province’s pro-independence ethnic Albanian leadership end in deadlock, with Serbia rejecting a Un-mediated proposal.
2008: Hundreds of Tibetan exiles begin a six-month march from India to Tibet to protest Beijing’s hold on the Himalayan region and China’s hosting of the Summer Olympic Games.
2009: A gunman, 28-year-old Michael Mclendon, kills 10 people, including his mother, four other relatives, and the wife and child of a local sheriff’s deputy across two rural Alabama counties, before committing suicide.
2010: An open diplomatic row in Israel during the visit of US Vicepresident Joe Biden spotlights the US’S failure to rein in Israeli settlement ambitions and deepens Palestinian suspicions that the US is too weak to broker a deal.
2011: King Mohammed VI says that Morocco will revise its constitution for the first time in 15 years, aiming to strengthen democracy in the face of a push across the Arab world.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Friedrich Schlegel, German poet
(1772-1829); John Wilkes Booth, American actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in
1865 (1838-1865 ); Fred Astaire, American dancer and singer
(1899-1987); Prince Edward, fourth child of England’s Queen Elizabeth II (1964- ); Chuck Norris, US actor (1940- ); Sharon Stone, US actress (1958- ); Bono, human rights activist, Irish musician and former lead singer of popular rock band U2 (1960- ); Edie Brickell, US singer (1966- ); Timbaland, US rapper/producer (1972- ).