Today in History

October 2

1870 - Rome becomes the capital of Italy.

1889 - First Pan American Conference is held in Washington.

1919 - US President Woodrow Wilson suffers a stroke, leaving him partially paralysed. 1934 - Royal Indian Navy is formed. 1940 - HMS Empress of Britain, carrying child war refugees to Canada, is sunk during Second World War.

1941 - German army launches all-out drive against Moscow in Second World War.

1944 - Nazi troops crush the twomonth-old Warsaw Uprising.

1953 - Earl Warren becomes Chief Justice of the United States.

1955 - Actress Joyce Randolph marries publisher Richard Charles.

1958 - The former French colony of Guinea proclaims its independence.

1962 - Egypt sends troops to Yemen to support republicans against Saudi-backed royalists.

1967 - Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first African-American justice of the US Supreme Court.

1984 - President His Highness Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan lays the foundation stone of the Mareb dam in Yemen.

1985 - American actor Rock Hudson dies of Aids.

1987 - Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba appoints Zine Al Abidine Bin Ali as Prime Minister.

1988 - Pakistan Supreme Court lifts ban on political parties participating in elections.

1996 - Yugoslavia broadly welcomed the UN’s decision to end sanctions imposed in 1992.

1997 - Canada recalls ambassador to Israel to protest use of forged Canadian passports by suspected Israeli agents.

1999 - Rebels release some 40 diplomats and foreigners after taking them hostage at the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok.

2004 - Sete Gibernau of Italy wins the inaugural Grand Prix of Qatar.

2006 - A gunman storms an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, killing five girls before committing suicide.

2007 - North and South Korean leaders meet in Pyongyang for a historic summit.

2013 - South Korea and the US sign a strategic pact to prevent a North Korean nuclear attack.