TODAY IN HISTORY

767 — Pope Paul I dies.

1098 — The Crusaders defeat the Turks at Antioch during the First Crusade.

1838 — The coronation of Queen Victoria takes place in Westminster Abbey, a year after she had ascended the throne.

1861 — Robert (O’hara) Burke, the Irish-born Australian explorer who crossed Australia from south to north, dies on his return journey.

1880 — Australia’s most famous bushranger, Ned Kelly, is wounded and captured at Glenrowan, Victoria.

1948 — Yugoslavia is expelled from Cominform for hostility to Soviet Union.

1950 — North Korean soldiers capture Seoul as South Koreans retreat south of Han River.

1970 — US troops begin their withdrawal from Cambodia.

1992 — Two earthquakes rock southern California; Burhanuddin Rabbani takes office as Afghanistan’s president, saying his top priority is the restoration of law.

1996 — Turkish president Suleyman Demirel approves the country’s first Islamic-led government in 73 years.

1996 — Russian troops begin a long-promised pullout from Chechnya.

1998 — Serb war crimes suspect Slavko Dokmanovic hangs himself at a detention centre outside The Hague.

2005 — The European Union and five nations pick France over Japan as the site for an experimental nuclear fusion reactor, opening the way for development of a potential source of clean, inexhaustible energy.

2006 — Montenegro becomes the 192nd member of the United Nations, a month after it ended its 88-year partnership with Serbia that completed the break up of the former Yugoslavia.

2007 — Israeli President Moshe Katsav agrees to resign in a plea bargain that drops rape allegations and the threat of jail time in return for pleading guilty to lesser charges.

2012 — Archaeologists say pottery fragments found in a south China cave have been confirmed to be 20,000 years old, making them the oldest pottery in the world.

2015 — A 13-year-old boy dies after falling a number of storeys inside the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney.

Today’s Birthdays: Alexander the Great, king of Macedon (356 BC-323 BC); Henry VIII, king of England (1491-1547); Richard Rodgers, US composer (1902-1979); Eric Ambler, British novelist-screenwriter (1909-1998).

Hans Blix, Swedish diplomat