Today in history
323 BC – Death of Alexander the Great, king of Macedonia, of malaria aged 33.
1381 – The Peasants’ Revolt, a popular uprising led bywat Tyler and sparked by the implementation of a poll tax, begins in Britain.
1665 – Dutch fleet is defeated by English off Lowestoft, England.
1886 – Mysterious death by drowning of Bavaria’s ‘‘Mad’’ King Ludwig.
1893 – First women’s golf tournament is played at Royal Lytham, England.
1917 – Fourteen German Gotha bombers carry out the first large- scale bombing raid by planes on London, killing 162.
1927 – United States aviator Charles Lindbergh is honoured with a tickertape parade in New York City after his pioneering transatlantic flight.
1956 – Last British troops leave Suez Canal base, turning the waterway over to Egypt after 74 years of operation.
1964 – South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela arrives on Robben Island to begin his life sentence, imposed the previous day.
1969 – Withdrawal of US combat troops from South Vietnam begins with pullout of unit fighting in Mekong Delta.
1983 – US spacecraft Pioneer 10 crosses the orbit of Neptune and becomes the first man-made object to leave the solar system.
1990 – East Germany begins final demolition of the Berlinwall, knocking out concrete slabs all over the city to reopen streets sealed since the Cold War barrier was built in 1961.
1995 – France announces it will abandon its 1992 moratorium on nuclear testing and conduct eight more tests in the South Pacific between September and May.
1997 – Timothy Mcveigh, a 29-year-old army veteran, is sentenced to death for bombing a government building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people. 2005 – US pop star Michael Jackson is cleared of all charges in a sex abuse trial that threatened to destroy his career.
2013 – A proposal to build amassive rival to the Panama Canal across the middle of Nicaragua is overwhelmingly backed by politicians.
2017 – US attorney general Jeff Sessions testifies before Senate Intelligence Committee, denies secretly meeting Russians.
Today’s Birthdays: William Butler Yeats, Irish poet (1865-1939); Slim Dusty, Australian country singer (1927-2003); Malcolm Mcdowell, British actor (1943-); Ban Ki-moon, the current UN Secretary General (1944-); Richard Thomas, US actor (1951-); Timallen, US actorcomedian (1953-).