Today in History

1497 – Juan Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI, is murdered.

1645 – The New Model Army, under Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Fairfax, beats royalist forces of King Charles at Naseby in England.

1777 – The Continental Congress approves the Stars and Stripes as the first national flag of the US.

1789 – Captain William Bligh and his loyal men from the HMS Bounty reach Timor, after sailing 5800km in a 6-metre launch.

1834 – Sandpaper patented by Isaac Fischer in the US.

1940 – German forces occupy

Paris.

1949 – The Vietnamese state is established at Saigon under former emperor Bao Dai.

1962 – The European Space Research Organisation is established in Paris.

1967 – The US Mariner spacecraft is launched towards Venus to see if the planet can support life.

1975 – The Soviet Union launches a second spacecraft in six days towards Venus.

1980 – The US rejects European call for participation of Palestine Liberation Organisation in Middle East peace talks.

1982 – Argentine forces on the Falkland Islands surrender to the British, ending a 10-week war.

1984 – New Zealand prime minister Robert Muldoon calls a surprise snap election, leading to his defeat at the polls a month later.

1999 – Nato peacekeepers in Kosovo discover a mass grave, believed to contain 81 bodies.

2012 – Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, left, arrives n Switzerland on her first trip to Europe in 24 years.

Birthdays

Harriet Beecher Stowe, US author/ abolitionist (1811-96); Miriam Dell, NZ botanist/women’s advocate (1924-2022); Che Guevara, Argentinian revolutionary (1928-67), Donald Trump, US president (1946-); Boy George, UK singer (1961-); Steffi Graf, German tennis player (1969-).