TODAY IN HISTORY

In 1809 composer Franz Joseph Haydn died in Vienna; he was 77.

In 1819 poet Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, N.Y.

In 1910 the Union of South Africa was founded.

In 1913 the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, providing for the popular election of U.S. senators, took effect.

In 1916, during World War I, British and German fleets fought in the Battle of Jutland off Denmark.

In 1961 South Africa became an independent republic outside the British Commonwealth.

In 1962 World War II Gestapo official Adolf Eichmann was hanged by Israel for his role in the Holocaust.

In 1970 an earthquake in Peru killed more than 66,000 people.

In 1977 the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was completed after three years of work.

In 1983 boxing legend Jack Dempsey died in New York; he was 87.

In 1989 House Speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas, dogged by questions about his ethics, announced he would resign.

In 1991 leaders of Angola’s two warring factions signed a peace treaty, ending a 16-year-old civil war.

In 1994 Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., maintaining his innocence, was indicted on 17 felony counts alleging he had plundered nearly $700,000 from the government. Also in 1994 the U.S. said it no longer was aiming its longrange missiles at the former Soviet Union.

In 2001 veteran FBI agent Robert Hanssen pleaded not guilty to charges of spying for Moscow.

In 2002 the World Cup soccer tournament opened in Asia for the first time with a match held in South Korea, which co-hosted the event with Japan.

In 2003 Olympic Centennial Park bombing suspect Eric Robert Rudolph was arrested outside a Murphy, N.C., grocery store. Also in 2003 Air France’s Concorde returned to Paris in a final commercial flight.

In 2005, breaking a silence of 30 years, former FBI official W. Mark Felt stepped forward as “Deep Throat,” the secret Washington Post source that helped bring down President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.

In 2006 the U.S. said it would join faceto-face talks with Iran over its disputed nuclear program if Tehran first agreed to put challenged atomic activities on hold; Iran dismissed the offer as “a propaganda move.”

In 2010 Israeli commandos killed nine Turkish activists aboard the Mavi Marmara during a botched raid on the aidsupply ship that was attempting to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.

In 2013 tornadoes killed 18 people in Oklahoma, mostly in El Reno, 11 days after a twister killed 24 people near Oklahoma City.

In 2014 Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a Taliban captive for nearly five years, was released in exchange for five detainees held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In 2017, facing an ethics probe as well as a series of recent child deaths and scandalous headlines, Illinois Department of Children and Family Services Director George Sheldon resigned.