Today in History

May 13 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 13:

1961 – Gary Cooper, who won Oscars for his roles in the films “Sergeant York” and “High Noon”, died aged 60.

1965 – Israel and West Germany agreed to establish diplomatic relations. Several Arab countries broke ties with West Germany.

1968 – Talks between North Vietnamese and American negotiators began in Paris aimed at ending the Vietnam War.

1981 – Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded as he drove through a crowd of 20,000 in St Peter’s Square in Rome. The gunman, Mehmet Ali Agca, was arrested.

1992 – Three astronauts simultaneously walked in space for the first time. They repaired the Intelsat-6 satellite from the U.S. shuttle Endeavour in a walk lasting eight hours 29 minutes.

1999 – Gene Sarazen, one of only four players to win each of golf’s four major professional tournaments, died aged 97.

2002 – U.S. President George W. Bush announced an agreement with Russia on a treaty to sharply cut the two countries’ nuclear arsenals to 1,700-2,200, from about 6,000 to 7,000.

2005 – Pope Benedict announced that he had decided to put his predecessor Pope John Paul II on the fast track to possible sainthood.

2009 – European Commission imposes record 1.06 billion euro ($1.45 billion) fine on chipmaker Intel Corp.

2014 – More than 150 miners killed in explosion at coal mine in Turkey.

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May 12 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 12:

1926 – Jozef Pilsudski led a successful military coup in Poland.

1943 – The German commander in North Africa, General von Arnim, surrendered in World War Two.

2001 – The American singer Perry Como died. His relaxed vocal style endured through six decades with such easy-listening ballads as “Catch a Falling Star” and “It’s Impossible”.

2002 – Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter landed in Havana on a private visit, the highest-profile American to visit since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.

2006 – Around 200 people died when an oil pipeline exploded on the outskirts of Nigeria’s capital Lagos after thieves tapped into it to steal fuel.

2006 – Justin Gatlin of the U.S. sets new 100m world record with a time of 9.76 seconds.

2008 – A 7.9 magnitude earthquake centred in Sichuan province devastated southwestern China, killing nearly 70,000 people.

2008 – The American artist Robert Rauschenberg, labelled a “Titan” of American art by the New York Times, died aged 82.

2008 – Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who saved thousands of Jewish children during World War Two by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, died.

2014 – Narendra Modi wins world’s largest-ever election in India.

2015 – Amtrak train derails in Philadelphia.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

May 10 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 10:

1904 – Sir Henry Morton Stanley, British-born journalist and African explorer, died. He was famous for his rescue of the Scottish missionary explorer David Livingstone in 1871.

1933 – Nazis, nationalist students and professors in black robes gathered on a square in central Berlin to burn books by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Bertolt Brecht and other authors condemned by Adolf Hitler’s followers as “un-German”.

1940 – Winston Churchill took over as British prime minister following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain.

1941 – Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, flew from Augsburg and parachuted down near Glasgow, Scotland, in an apparent attempt to negotiate a peace deal. He was arrested and imprisoned.

1963 – Pope John XXIII received the Balzan Peace Prize, the first peace prize ever awarded to a pope.

1981 – Francois Mitterrand elected as first Socialist president in France.

1994 – Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa’s first black president.

1995 – Britain lifted a 23-year ban on ministerial talks with Sinn Fein, the political ally of the Irish Republican Army guerrillas in Northern Ireland.

1997 – 1,560 people were killed and 2,810 injured when an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale rocked rural areas of eastern Iran.

2005 – Germany unveiled a new memorial in Berlin for the six million Jewish victims of Nazi terror.

2013 – Final piece of One World Trade Center is attached, making it the tallest building in the U.S.

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May 9 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 9:

1901 – Australia’s first parliament opened in Melbourne.

1926 – Americans Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett became the first people to fly over the North Pole.

1927 – Canberra replaced Melbourne as the capital of Australia.

1978 – The body of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro was found in the boot of a car in Rome; he had been kidnapped and murdered by the Red Brigades.

1986 – Sherpa Tenzing Norgay died; he shared with Edmund Hillary the achievement of being the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953.

2001 – A total of 126 people died after a stampede at Accra’s main soccer stadium when police fired teargas at rioting fans. It was Africa’s worst soccer disaster.

2001 – Nicos Sampson, leader of a brief Greek-inspired coup which prompted the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, died aged 66.

2002 – A radio-controlled landmine exploded in Kaspiisk in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan killing 42 people and wounding 150 during a Victory Day parade.

2004 – Chechnya’s Moscow-backed president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed when a bomb blast tore through a packed stadium in Grozny.

2014 – 111-year-old Alexander Imich certified as world’s oldest living man.

2015 – Russia’s Victory Day parade in Moscow marks 70th anniversary of end of World War Two.

Image: Flickr

May 5 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 5:

1955 – The Federal Republic of (West) Germany became a sovereign state after Allied High Commissioners met to abolish their controlling body set up after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. West Germany also joined NATO on this day.

1999 – Indonesia and Portugal signed an agreement leading to independence for the territory of East Timor.

1999 – World’s first filling station for liquid and gaseous hydrogen.

2001 – “Duyfken” (Little Dove) replica vessel leaves Australia for Amsterdam to commemorate 400th anniversary of VOC (United East India Company) using same historic route of original ship.

2002 – Jacques Chirac won 82 percent of the vote in the second round of French presidential elections, crushing far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen with the largest vote in France’s 44-year history.

2003 – Walter Sisulu, a veteran of the struggle against white minority rule in South Africa and long-time friend and mentor to Nelson Mandela, died aged 90.

2004 – Picasso’s “Boy With the Pipe” set a new world record for the most expensive painting ever sold at auction when it fetched $104,168,000 at Sotheby’s in New York.

2006 – Naushad Ali, one of Bollywood’s most loved composers and the first to use Indian classical music in Hindi films, died aged 87.

2008 – World record attempt for largest plate of hummus in Jerusalem.

2010 – Mass protests against austerity in Greece.

2011 – Canadian Armed Forces help Quebec residents with record flooding of Richelieu River.

Image credit: Pixabay

May 4 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 4:

1945 – The U.S. 7th Army captured Hitler’s Alpine retreat of Berchtesgaden.

1970 – National Guards shot four students dead and wounded 11 at Kent State University in the United States during demonstrations against the Vietnam war.

1980 – Yugoslav wartime partisan leader Josip Broz Tito died aged 87. He became leader of the country in 1945 and president in 1953.

1989 – Colonel Oliver North was found guilty in U.S. investigations in the Iran-Contra affair.

2001 – World’s first space tourist Dennis Tito speaks to media from International Space Station.

2004 – Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government entered the record books, having survived 1,060 days to become Italy’s longest-serving administration since World War Two.

2005 – Constantin Brancusi’s “Bird in Space” shattered the record for a sculpture at auction when it soared to an astonishing $27,450,000 at Christie’s sale of Impressionist and modern art.

2006 – Reuters and Chicago Mercantile Exchange launch world’s first centrally cleared foreign exchange marketplace.

2007 – A tornado wiped out most of the small farming town of Greensburg in southwestern Kansas, killing 10 people and injuring at least 63.

2007 – Hotel heiress Paris Hilton ordered to spend 45 days in jail for violating probation for alcohol-related reckless driving.

2008 – Cyclone Nargis killed more than 130,000 people in military-ruled Myanmar, ripping through Yangon and the Irrawaddy delta.

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April 26 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 26:

1937 – The Spanish Basque town of Guernica was bombed by German planes sent by Hitler to help Franco during the Spanish Civil War.

1964 – Tanganyika, Zanzibar and Pemba joined to form the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. It was re-named Tanzania on October 29.

1986 – A reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear complex in Ukraine exploded and caught fire, spreading a radioactive cloud across Europe in the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

1990 – Carlos Pizarro Leongomez, leader of the leftist Colombian guerrilla movement M-19, who gave up violence to run for president, was assassinated on a plane.

1994 – South Africa held its first all-race elections for the national assembly and provincial parliaments.

1997 – Peng Zhen, the first senior victim of China’s radical Cultural Revolution and a close associate of late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, died.

1998 – Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi was assassinated in San Sebastian parish in Guatemala City after overseeing a study of the atrocities in Guatemala’s long civil war.

2002 – A 19-year-old student bent on revenge for being expelled, shot dead 12 teachers, two pupils, a secretary, a police officer and himself at the Gutenberg high school in the German town of Erfurt.

2004 – Leading Polish film maker Lew Rywin was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail for soliciting a bribe in the country’s biggest corruption scandal since the 1989 fall of communism.

2005 – Syria withdrew its last soldiers and intelligence agents from Lebanon, ending a 29-year military presence in its small neighbour.

2008 – U.S. President George W. Bush conducts the Marine Band rendition of Stars and Stripes Forever at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner.

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April 25 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 25:

1915 – Australian and New Zealand troops stormed ashore at Gallipoli, Turkey, in World War One as part of a British-led Allied force. Some 7,000 Australians and 2,000 New Zealanders were killed during the eight-month battle against Turkish forces.

1945 – The U.S. and Soviet armies met in the German city of Torgau as World War Two drew to a close in Europe.

1985 – Britain’s Princess Diana meets Pope John Paul II.

1995 – Ginger Rogers, U.S. star of stage and screen, died at 83. She is best remembered for her film dance routines with Fred Astaire notably in “Flying Down to Rio” and “Top Hat”.

1998 – Christian Mortensen, who emigrated to the United States from his native Denmark in 1903, died. He was believed to be the oldest man in the world at the age of 115.

2001 – Police arrested former Philippine president Joseph Estrada on a charge of plundering the economy.

2002 – Russia said its troops had killed one of the country’s most wanted men, Khattab, an Arab-born Chechen guerrilla leader with suspected links to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network.

2005 – A crowded commuter train derailed and slammed into an apartment building in Japan, killing 107 people in the country’s worst rail accident in more than 40 years.

2007 – Mexico City, the capital of the world’s second-largest Roman Catholic country, legalized abortion. Lawmakers voted 46 to 19 to pass a leftist-sponsored bill allowing women to abort in the first three months of pregnancy, despite heavy pressure from the Church.

2007 – Funeral for former Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow.

2015 – Powerful earthquake hits Nepal, killing hundreds.

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April 22 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 22:

1915 – The second battle of Ypres started when German troops released clouds of deadly chlorine gas on British troops. It was the first major gas attack of World War One.

1969 – The British yachtsman Robin Knox-Johnston arrived at Falmouth after completing the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the Earth, in 312 days.

1994 – Former U.S. president Richard Nixon died aged 81. He was the 37th president of the United States from 1969 until his resignation in 1974 over the Watergate scandal.

1997 – Peruvian troops stormed the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima, freeing 71 hostages held by Marxist Tupac Amaru guerrillas. One hostage, three soldiers and all 14 guerrillas were killed.

2000 – Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzales is taken by U.S. Federal agents from his Miami relatives.

2002 – Former Sotheby’s chairman Alfred Taubman was sentenced to a year and a day in prison and fined $7.5 million for fixing commission fees with rival auctioneer Christie’s.

2004 – A train laden with explosives blew up at a station near the centre of Ryongchon in North Korea. At least 161 people were killed, hundreds injured and nearly 2,000 homes destroyed in the blast.

2005 – Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, pleaded guilty and said Osama bin Laden had hand-picked him to fly a plane into the White House.

2008 – U.S. Air Force retires remaining F-117 Nighthawk aircraft from service.

2014 – First PLO delegation in Gaza since 2007 arrives for unity talks with Hama.

2016 – Paris Agreement on climate change ratified at United Nations in New York.

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April 21 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on April 21:

1910 – American novelist Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) died. His masterpieces “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” were drawn from his boyhood experiences.

1918 – Baron Manfred von Richthofen, Germany’s top aviator in World War One, was killed in action. Known as “The Red Baron”, he shot down 80 enemy aircraft.

1960 – Brasilia became Brazil’s new capital.

1967 – A military coup in Athens established the regime of the “Greek Colonels”.

1971 – Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier, president of Haiti since 1957, died. He ran the country as a dictatorship and created a gangster militia known as the Tontons Macoutes.

1989 – Tens of thousands of students and workers poured into Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in defiance of official warnings against anti-government protests.

2002 – Thousands took to the streets to protest against the shock success of the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the French presidential election.

2003 – The American singer Nina Simone died aged 70. Her smoky tones gave voice to the American civil rights movement and her repertoire ranged from gospel to George Gershwin.

2004 – Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was freed after 18 years in an Israeli jail, saying he was proud to have revealed secrets exposing the Jewish state as an atomic power.

2006 – Nepal’s King Gyanendra agreed to restore political power to the people, a year after sacking the government.

2016 – Musician Prince dies.

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