Today in History

1765 – British Parliament passes Stamp Act to raise revenue in American colonies.

1790 – Thomas Jefferson becomes the first US Secretary of State. 1794 – United States Congress passes law prohibiting American ships from supplying slaves to other countries.

1832 – British Parliament passes the Reform Act, increasing the electorate from about 500,000 voters to 813,000.

1859 – Powerful earthquake in Quito, Ecuador, kills 5000 people and destroys landmark buildings.

1882 – US Congress outlaws polygamy.

1903 – Niagara Falls runs out of water because of a drought.

1919 – The world’s first international airline service is launched, a weekly flight between Paris and Brussels.

1960 – Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes patent the laser.

1977 – Indira Gandhi, left, resigns as prime minister of India.

1996 – The United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia issues the first indictments for crimes against Serbs, charging three Bosnian Muslims and a Bosnian Croat with murder, torture and rape.

2007 – A rocket explodes 50 metres from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a news conference in Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone. No-one is injured.

2016 – Islamist extremists kill 31 people in Brussels in bomb attacks at the airport and a subway. More than 270 are wounded.

2018 – US President Donald Trump imposes $60 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese imports.

Birthdays

Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany (1797-1888); Stephen Sondheim, US composer (1930-); William Shatner, Canadian actor (1931-); James Patterson, US author (1947-); Andrew Lloyd Webber, UK composer (1948-); Reese Witherspoon, US actress (1976-).