Today in history

1810 – Bogota rises against Spanish rule. The day is now Independence Day in Colombia.

1837 – London’s first railway station opens at Euston.

1871 – The English Football Association Challenge Cup Competition is formed, to become better known as the FA Cup. In the first final, Wanderers beat the Royal Engineers 1-0 watched by a crowd of 2000.

1881 – Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, a fugitive since the Battle of the Little Big Horn, surrenders to United States federal troops.

1917 – Pact of Corfu is agreed under which Serbs, Croats and Slovenes form a union called Yugoslavia.

1940 – The first singles charts are published in the US journal Billboard. No1is I’ll Never Smile Again, by the Tommy Dorsey Band, vocals by Frank Sinatra.

1944 – Adolf Hitler is injured by a bomb in an attache case, an assassination attempt by German officers that leads to a brutal purge.

1951 – Jordan’s King Abdullah is assassinated in Jerusalem by a Palestinian nationalist after annexing West Bank territory.

1954 – Armistice for Indo-china is signed in Geneva, under which Vietnam is separated into North and South.

1969 – US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘‘Buzz’’ Aldrin become the first men to set foot on the Moon.

1974 – Turkey invades the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

1989 – Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is placed under house arrest for her outspoken attacks on the country’s military rulers.

1996 – Hutu rebels attack Tutsi refugees at a camp in Burundi, killing some 320 people, mostly women and children.

2004 – The European Commission approves a merger between the record companies Sony Music and BMG that reduces the number of global music firms to four.

2012 – A gunman hurls a gas canister inside a crowded movie theatre in a Denver, Colorado, suburb during a midnight showing of the new Batman movie and then opens fire, killing 12 people and wounding nearly 60 others.

2015 – The US and Cuba restore full diplomatic relations after more than five decades of frosty relations rooted in the Cold War.

Today’s birthdays:

Sir Edmund Hillary, New Zealand explorer-mountain climber (1919-2008); Natalie Wood, US actress (1938-1981); Carlos

Santana, Mexican guitarist (1947-); Terri Irwin, American naturalist, widow of Steve Irwin (1964-); Gisele Bundchen,

Brazilian model (1980-).