View source for Today in History 6 3

Highlights in history on this date:<br><br>1788 - A party led by Lieutenant Philip Gidley King lands on Norfolk Island to establish a British settlement.<br><br>1836 - Alamo mission in San Antonio, Texas, falls to Mexican army after 13-day siege in which Davy Crockett and 186 other defenders die.<br><br>1857 - The US Supreme Court rules that escaped slave Dred Scott cannot sue for his freedom because as a slave he is property, not a citizen.<br><br>1888 - Death of Louisa May Alcott, US author of Little Women, aged 56.<br><br>1899 - Felix Hoffman patents his formula for acetylsalicylic acid, which he calls aspirin.<br><br>1900 - Death of Gottfried Daimler, German motor engineer who made the first motorcycle.<br><br>1930 - Pre-packaged frozen food produced by the company set up by Clarence Birdseye goes on  [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] sale for the first time in the US.<br><br>1944 - US heavy bombers stage the first American raid on Berlin  [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] during World War II.<br><br>1945 - German city Cologne falls to US First Army in World War II.<br><br>1946 - France recognises Vietnam as free state within Indochina Federation.<br><br>1951 - Death of Ivor Novello, Welsh composer and playwright.<br><br>1953 - Georgy Malenkov succeeds the late Joseph Stalin as premier of Soviet Union.<br><br>1957 - Two former British colonies of Gold Coast and Togoland form independent West African nation of Ghana.<br><br>1965 - US Defence Department announces that 3500 Marines are being sent to South Vietnam, the first US ground combat troops committed to fighting against Communist guerrillas.<br><br>1967 - Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of former Soviet leader Josef Stalin, requests asylum at the US embassy in New Delhi.<br><br>1973 - Death of US author and 1938 Nobel Literature prize winner, Pearl Buck, who wrote The Good Earth.<br><br>1983 - Donald Maclean, a British diplomat who became a Soviet spy, dies in Moscow.<br><br>1987 - A British ferry, the Herald Of Free Enterprise, capsizes off the Belgian port Zeebrugge, drowning 193 people.<br><br>1991 - George Carey becomes Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the world's 70 million Anglicans.<br><br>1992 - A computer virus called Michelangelo strikes thousands of personal computers around the world.<br><br>1995 - The US dollar plummets to 92.70 yen, its lowest level against the Japanese currency anywhere since modern exchange rates were established in the late 1940s.<br><br>1997 - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II launches the first official royal web site.<br><br>2003 - An Algerian passenger jet crashes in the Sahara Desert shortly after takeoff, killing 116 people.<br><br>2009 - North  [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] Korea threatens South Korea passenger planes amid rising tensions on Korean Peninsula, prompting some other airlines to re-route flights.<br><br>2012 - The US, Europe and other world powers announce that bargaining will begin again with Iran over its fiercely disputed nuclear efforts amid rising talk of war.<br><br>2015 - Lawyers for Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan visit the convicted drug traffickers on Nusakambangan, the Indonesian prison island where they are to be executed.<br><br>2017 - Nepalese authorities say Australian man Matthew Jones has died of apparent altitude sickness near the Mt Everest base camp.<br><br>Today's Birthdays:<br><br>Michelangelo, Italian renaissance artist (1475-1564); Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet (1806-1861); Valentina Tereshkova, Russian cosmonaut and first woman in space (1937-); Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, New [http://search.huffingtonpost.com/search?q=Zealand%20opera&s_it=header_form_v1 Zealand opera] singer (1944-); Mary Wilson, US singer of The Supremes fame (1944-); David Gilmour, British musician (1946-); Steve Vizard, Australian businessman and TV personality (1956-); Shaquille O'Neal, US basketball player (1972-).<br><br>Thought For Today:<br><br>Le sens commun n'est pas si commun (Common sense is not so common). - Voltaire, French author and philosopher (1694-1778).<br><br>Advertisement