Today in history
978 — English king St Edward the Martyr is murdered at Corfe Castle on the orders of his stepmother, eager to see her son Ethelred crowned.
1745 — Death of Sir Robert Walpole, British Whig statesman and prime minister for a record 21 years, 1721-1742.
1909 — Einar Dessau of Denmark uses a shortwave transmitter to converse with a government radio post about 10 km away in what’s believed to be the first broadcast by a ‘‘ham’’ operator.
1937 — More than 400 people, mostly children, are killed in a gas explosion at a school in New London, Texas.
1962 — Ceasefire in Algerian War is signed by French and Algerian rebel delegations in Evian-les-baine, France.
1970 — Cambodia’s Prince Norodom Sihanouk is deposed as chief of state while he is on visit to Moscow.
1974 — Most of the Arab oilproducing nations end their embargo against the United States.
1977 — In the Congo, President Marien Ngouabi is assassinated.
1978 — Former Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is found guilty of ordering the assassination of an opponent, and is sentenced to death.
1998 — E M S Namboodiripad, an 89-year-old Indian Marxist who headed the world’s first democratically elected communist government, dies.
1999 — The Kosovo peace talks collapse after ethnic Albanian delegates unilaterally sign a peace accord that defiant Serbs reject.
2000 — Taiwan ends more than a half century of Nationalist Party rule, electing opposition leader Chen Shuibian, whose party favours Taiwan’s formal independence from the rest of China.
2006 — South Australian and Tasmanian elections return incumbent Labor governments; thousands of anti-war protesters take to the streets around the world, marking the third anniversary of the Us-led invasion of Iraq.
2007 — Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer dies after being found unconscious in his hotel room the morning after his side’s shock World Cup exit.
2012 — The Yemen government says more than 2000 people have been killed in a year of political turmoil that led to the resignation of its longtime president.
2016 — Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the November 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, is arrested in the Molenbeek area of Brussels. Four days later, Islamic extremists bomb the airport and a subway in the Belgian capital. TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS Queen Latifah, US rapper and actress (1970-); Lily Collins, Britishamerican actress (1989-).