Today In History June 29

HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE

1312 - German King Henry VII is crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome.

1613 - The original Globe Theatre in London burns down during the first performance of Shakespeare's Henry VIII.

1855 - The Daily Telegraph is first published in London.

1864 - Samuel Crowther is consecrated Bishop of Niger, the first black Church of England bishop.

1880 - The South Pacific island of Tahiti is formally annexed by France, having been a French protectorate since 1842.

1905 - The Automobile Association is formed in London by 50 motorists to counter what they see as police hostility towards the motor car.

1949 - South Africa begins its apartheid program by enacting a ban against racially mixed marriages.

1965 - US paratroopers take their first offensive action in South Vietnam, attacking communist stronghold 30km northeast of Saigon.

1966 - North Vietnamese capital Hanoi and its principal port, Haiphong, are bombed by the US for the first time in the Vietnam War.

1967 - Israel defies international protests and unites the divided city of Jerusalem for the first time in two decades, following its victory in the Six-Day War.

1967 - American actress Jayne Mansfield is killed in a car crash near New Orleans.

1974 - Isabel Peron is sworn in as president of Argentina, taking over from her husband Juan Peron after he fell ill.

He died two days later.

1980 - Vigdis Finnbogadotir is elected Iceland's president, Europe's first democratically elected woman head of state.

1992 - Algerian head of state Mohammed Boudiaf is assassinated as he opens a cultural centre in the eastern Algerian town of Annaba.

1994 - Prince Charles admits on television that he committed adultery during his marriage to Princess Diana but says he has no plans for a divorce.

1995 - Lana Turner, the blonde bombshell who was discovered at a Hollywood soda fountain and became one of America's most glamorous movie stars, dies aged 75.

2000 - A first printing of the US Declaration of Independence fetches $US8.14 million in a Sotheby's online auction, breaking the record for any sale on the internet.

2001 - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, 63, is unanimously re-elected to a second term by a 189-member General Assembly.

2003 - American actress Katharine Hepburn dies aged 96.

She won a record four best actress Oscars during a career that spanned much of the 20th century.

2006 - Female voters in Kuwait, who won the right to vote and run for office the year before, cast ballots in parliamentary elections for the first time.

2007 - Britain thwarts an attack in London's busy theatre district when police defuse a lethal mix of gasoline, propane and nails discovered in an abandoned Mercedes.
A second explosives-rigged car is also found nearby.

2008 - Zimbabwe's longtime ruler Robert Mugabe is sworn in as president for a sixth term.

2013 - South African President Jacob Zuma expresses hope that the health of critically ill anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela will improve after he was admitted to hospital three weeks earlier with a recurring lung infection.

2014 - The murder trial of Oscar Pistorius resumes after a one-month adjournment during which South African mental health experts evaluated the Olympic athlete.

2016 - Three men in Turkey, believed to be Islamic State militants, open fire then blow themselves up in Istanbul's main international airport, killing 45 people and wounding more than 230 others.

2017 - Iraq's prime minister declares the end of the Islamic State caliphate after government troops capture the ruined mosque at the heart of the group's de facto capital Mosul.

2018 - BAE Systems is awarded a $A35 billion contract to build nine next-generation Hunter Class frigates for the Royal Australian Navy with construction expected to begin in 2020.

2019 - England's chief coroner clears MI5 and police of failing to prevent the 2017 London Bridge terrorist attack that killed eight people, including two Australians.

Today's Birthdays:

Giacomo Leopardi, Italian poet and philosopher (1798-1837); George Washington Goethals, US builder of Panama Canal (1858-1928); Antoine Marie Roger de Saint-Exupery, French aviator and writer (1900-1944); Oriana Fallaci, tour sapa giá rẻ Italian-born journalist (1929-2006); Eddie Mabo, Australian indigenous land-rights campaigner (1936-1992); Ken Done, Australian artist (1940-); Mike Willesee, Australian journalist (1942-2019); Colin Hay, Scottish-Australian singer (1953-); Peter FitzSimons, Australian rugby union player and tour sapa từ hà nội author (1961-); Bret McKenzie, NZ comedian and actor (1976-); Nicole Scherzinger, US singer (1978-); Christopher Egan, Australian actor (1984-).

Thought For Today:

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers - Lord Alfred Tennyson, English poet (1809-1892).