Today in history
1536 — France signs Treaty of Lyons with Portugal for attack on Spain.
1544 — England’s King Henry VIII crosses to Calais to join Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in campaign against France’s King Francis I in Picardy.
1798 — The US Congress passes the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to publish false, scandalous or malicious writing about the government.
1865 — Edward Whymper leads the first team of climbers to reach the summit of the Matterhorn in the Alps at a height of 4477 metres.
1867 — Explosives manufacturer Alfred Nobel first demonstrates his invention, dynamite, at a quarry in the UK.
1946 — Dr Benjamin Spock’s famous baby bible, Baby And Child Care, is published.
1958 — Iraq’s King Feisal and Premier Nuri-es-said are assassinated in a Baghdad coup, and King Hussein assumes power as head of the Arab Federation.
1976 — The Chinese-built Tanzam railway is completed ahead of schedule linking Zambia with the port of Dar-es-salaam in Tanzania.
1984 — David Lange and his leftist Labour Party sweep to a landslide victory in New Zealand, defeating the ruling National Party led by Sir Robert Muldoon.
1994 — The UN Security Council urges the world to aid the estimated 250,000 Hutu refugees from Rwanda crushed into Goma, Zaire.
1998 — Death of Richard Mcdonald, who pioneered the fastfood concept that evolved into Mcdonald’s, the world’s largest restaurant chain, aged 89.
1999 — Argentina and the Falkland Islands end a 17-year standoff, resuming air links severed after the Falklands war.
2005 — US scientists announce they have detected a planet outside our solar system with not one, but three suns, a finding that challenges astronomers’ theories of planet formation.
2006 — Jaroslaw Kaczynski is sworn in as Poland’s prime minister by his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski.
2007 — The Los Angeles archdiocese reaches a $660 million settlement with more than 500 alleged victims of clergy sex abuse.
2014 — Alice Coachman Davis, the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal, dies at the age of 90.
2016 — A 19-tonne cargo truck is deliberately driven into crowds in the French city of Nice by a lone terrorist, killing 86 people and injuring more than 430 others, including three Australians. Today’s Birthdays: Emmeline Pankhurst, British feminist (1858-1928); David Mitchell, British comedian (1974-); Victoria, crown princess of Sweden (1977-).