TODAY IN HISTORY

1356 — An English army led by The Black Prince, son of Edward III, defeats King John II of France in the Battle of Poitiers at the end of the first phase of the Hundred Years War.

1870 — French surrender Versailles to Germans in FrancoPrussian War.

1881 — The 20th president of the United States, James Garfield, dies of wounds inflicted by an assassin 11 weeks earlier.

1893 — New Zealand becomes the first country to grant all its women the right to vote.

1934 — Bruno Richard Hauptmann is arrested in New York and charged with kidnapping baby of US aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh.

1941 — Germans take Kiev in Soviet Union in World War II.

1944 — Soviet Union and Finland sign peace treaty in Moscow, ending three-year war.

1945 — William Joyce, who broadcast Nazi propaganda to Britain during the war as Lord Haw Haw, is sentenced to death by a British court for treason. He was later hanged.

1957 — The United States conducts its first underground nuclear test, in the Nevada desert.

1989 — UTA flight 772, a DC-10 passenger airliner, blows up over Tenere Desert in Niger en route to Paris from Brazzaville, the Republic of Congo, killing 171 people. Libya is later blamed for the explosion.

1996 — Russian President Boris Yeltsin agrees to transfer full power to his prime minister while he undergoes heart surgery.

1997 — In his first public comments since the death of Princess Diana, Prince Charles tells the British people he will always feel the loss of his former wife and thanks them for their support.

1999 — Following a vote for independence, foreign peacekeeping troops begin pouring into East Timor, experiencing no resistance from Indonesian troops or antiindependence militias.

2004 — Hu Jintao becomes the undisputed leader of China as the country completes its first orderly transfer of power in the communist era.

2010 — A leaking BP oil well causing a huge spill in the Gulf of Mexico is sealed after numerous attempts.