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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 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, du lịch Bắc Kinh 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 (1944-); Mary Wilson, US singer of The Supremes fame (1944-); David Gilmour, British vtr.org.vn 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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