Today in history
1560 - Charles IX succeeds as King of France on death of Francis II.
1792 - Trial of France’s King Louis XVI begins.
1797 - Napoleon Bonaparte arrives in Paris to command forces for an invasion of England.
1812 - Napoleon Bonaparte leaves his troops retreating from Russia and sets out for Paris.
1890 - New Zealand has its first ‘‘one man, one vote’’ election, leading to the Liberal Party coming to power and embarking on a long era of significant reform.
1913 - Britain forbids sending arms to Ireland.
1944 - Allied troops take Ravenna, Italy, in World War II.
1956 - British and French forces begin withdrawal from Egypt in the Suez War.
1962 - United States and Soviet Union agree to co-operate in peaceful uses of outer space.
1989 - Israeli soldiers kill five heavily armed Arab guerillas, who the military says crossed the border from Egypt to launch a terrorist attack commemorating anniversary of Palestinian uprising.
1993 - A letter bomb blast injures Vienna’s mayor in his home. It is the fifth explosive sent in three days to journalists, priests and others linked to Austria’s immigrant community.
1995 - Tel Aviv district court indicts Yigal Amir, the confessed assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, along with two of his suspected accomplices.
1996 - US President Bill Clinton names United Nations Ambassador Madeleine Albright as the country’s first female secretary of state.
2001 - New Zealand yachtsman Peter Blake, two-time winner of the America’s Cup, is slain by Brazilian pirates on the Amazon River.
2003 - An explosion tears through a morning commuter train just outside Yessentuki station in Russia’s southern fringe. Forty-six people are killed and more than 160 injured.
2006 - Fiji’s military chief Commodore Frank Bainimarama overthrows the government in the country’s fourth coup in 20 years.
2007 - A man opens fire with a rifle at a busy Omaha department store, killing eight people before taking his own life. Five more people are wounded, two critically.
2008 - Eleven Australians are among the 122 people rescued from a stricken Argentinian cruise ship that runs aground in Antarctica.
Today’s Birthdays:
Martin Van Buren, first native-born US president (1782-1862); George Armstrong Custer, American cavalry commander (1839-1876); Walt Disney, US cartoonist-film producer (1901-1966); Little Richard, US singer (1932-); Sir Roger Douglas, New Zealand politician (1937-); Jose Carreras, Spanish operatic tenor (1946-).