Today in History 6 3

Highlights in history on this date:

1788 - A party led by Lieutenant Philip Gidley King lands on Norfolk Island to establish a British settlement.

1836 - Alamo mission in San Antonio, Texas, falls to Mexican army after 13-day siege in which Davy Crockett and 186 other defenders die.

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.

1888 - Death of Louisa May Alcott, US author of Little Women, aged 56.

1899 - Felix Hoffman patents his formula for acetylsalicylic acid, which he calls aspirin.

1900 - Death of Gottfried Daimler, German motor engineer who made the first motorcycle.

1930 - Pre-packaged frozen food produced by the company set up by Clarence Birdseye goes on sale for the first time in the US.

1944 - US heavy bombers stage the first American raid on Berlin during World War II.

1945 - German city Cologne falls to US First Army in World War II.

1946 - France recognises Vietnam as free state within Indochina Federation.

1951 - Death of Ivor Novello, Welsh composer and playwright.

1953 - Georgy Malenkov succeeds the late Joseph Stalin as premier of Soviet Union.

1957 - Two former British colonies of Gold Coast and Togoland form independent West African nation of Ghana.

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.

1967 - Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of former Soviet leader Josef Stalin, requests asylum at the US embassy in New Delhi.

1973 - Death of US author and 1938 Nobel Literature prize winner, Pearl Buck, who wrote The Good Earth.

1983 - Donald Maclean, a British diplomat who became a Soviet spy, dies in Moscow.

1987 - A British ferry, the Herald Of Free Enterprise, capsizes off the Belgian port Zeebrugge, drowning 193 people.

1991 - George Carey becomes Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm the world's 70 million Anglicans.

1992 - A computer virus called Michelangelo strikes thousands of personal computers around the world.

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.

1997 - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II launches the first official royal web site.

2003 - An Algerian passenger jet crashes in the Sahara Desert shortly after takeoff, killing 116 people.

2009 - North Korea threatens South Korea passenger planes amid rising tensions on Korean Peninsula, prompting some other airlines to re-route flights.

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.

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.

2017 - Nepalese authorities say Australian man Matthew Jones has died of apparent altitude sickness near the Mt Everest base camp.

Today's Birthdays:

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 Zealand opera singer vtr.org.vn (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-).

Thought For Today:

Le sens commun n'est pas si commun (Common sense is not so common). - Voltaire, French author and philosopher (1694-1778).

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