Today in History, July 6
HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE:
1189 - King Henry II of England dies and is succeeded by Richard I.
1483 - King Richard III crowned.
1535 - Sir Thomas More is executed in England for treason.
1699 - Captain William Kidd, the pirate, is taken into custody in Boston, Massachusetts. He is later hanged in England.
1809 - Pope Pius VII, having excommunicated Napoleon Bonaparte, is taken prisoner by French.
1813 - John Macarthur ships 36 bales of wool from NSW to England.
1885 - Louis Pasteur performs the first inoculation of a human on a young boy bitten by a rabid dog.
1917 - Arab forces led by TE Lawrence capture the port of Aqaba from the Turks in WWI.
1919 - A British dirigible lands at New York's Roosevelt Field, marking the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by an airship.
1928 - The first all-talking feature film, The Lights of New York, premieres in New York.
1942 - Diarist Anne Frank and her family take refuge from the Nazis in Amsterdam.
1943 - Darwin is bombed. The city was bombed 64 times during WWII.
1945 - Nicaragua becomes the first nation to formally accept the United Nations charter.
1957 - Althea Gibson becomes the first black tennis player to win a Wimbledon singles title, defeating fellow American Darlene Hard 6-3 6-2.
1960 - Seven-year-old Rodger Woodward becomes the first person to survive an unprotected plunge over Niagara Falls after falling out of a boat.
1962 - US novelist and Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner dies.
1971 - Louis Armstrong, US jazz musician, dies.
1975 - Comoros Islands parliament declares unilateral independence from French rule.
1988 - The world's worst offshore accident occurs when the Piper Alpha oil platform explodes in the British sector of the North Sea, killing 167 people.
1991 - UN nuclear inspection team arrives in Iraq to test President Saddam Hussein's promise of full co-operation, while a second team witnesses destruction of Iraq's last known long-range missiles.
1994 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat share a platform in Paris to receive a United Nations peace prize.
1995 - A Queensland school bans performance by a PNG dance group because of their bare breasts.
1997 - The rover Sojourner rolls down a ramp onto Mars to begin inspecting soil and rocks.
1998 - Death of singing cowboy star Roy Rogers in California, aged 86.
1999 - Israeli parliament approves Ehud Barak as prime minister.
2001 - Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen pleads guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy to spy for Russia.
2002 - Two unidentified gunmen kill Afghan Vice-President and Minister of Public Works Haji Abdul Qadir in Kabul.
2004 - British Prime Minister Tony Blair admits that biological and chemical weapons, which he once insisted Saddam Hussein had primed for use, may never be found in Iraq.
2005 - New York Times reporter Judith Miller is jailed for refusing to divulge a confidential source to a grand jury investigating the Bush administration's leak of an undercover CIA operative's name.
2006 - Felipe Calderon wins the official count in Mexico's disputed presidential race.
2009 - Jadranka Kosor became the first female prime minister of Croatia.
2010 - France's justice minister goes before parliament to defend a hotly debated bill that would ban burqa-style Islamic veils in public.
2011 - The 2018 Winter Olympics are awarded to the South Korean city of Pyeongchang, sending the winter games to Asia for the first time since 1998.
2013 - Islamic militants attack a boarding school, setting it ablaze as students sleep, killing at least 30 in Nigeria's embattled northeast.
2014 - Israel arrests six Jewish suspects in the grisly slaying of a Palestinian teenager who was abducted and burned alive.
2015 - A summit of 40 indigenous leaders as well as Prime Minister Tony Abbott and opposition leader Bill Shorten discusses a possible 2017 referendum for constitutional recognition of the first Australians.
2017 - Australia would join military action against North Korea if the rogue nation fires a nuclear warhead at the United States, acting Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce confirms.
Today's Birthdays:
John Flaxman, English sculptor (1755-1826); Maximilian, archduke of Austria and emperor of Mexico, (1832-1867); Annette Kellerman, Australian swimmer (1886-1975); Frida Kahlo, Mexican artist (1907-1954); Nancy Reagan, former US First Lady (1921-); Bill Haley, rock'n'roll pioneer (1925-1981); Ruth Cracknell, Australian actress (1925-2002); Dalai Lama, exiled Tibetan leader (1935-); George W Bush, former US president (1946-); Sylvester Stallone, US actor-producer (1946-); Geoffrey Rush, Australian actor (1951-); 50 Cent, US rapper (1975-); Meg Mac, Australian musician (1990-).
Thought For Today:
Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form - Andre Maurois, French author (1885-1967).
