On this day - July 16
2009-07-16 08:13
Today is Thursday, July 16, the 197th day of 2009. There are 168 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1054 - Pope Leo IX delivers an excommunication to the patriarch in Constantinople. The patriarch then excommunicates the pope, resulting in the East-West Schism, where Christianity is split into Catholic and Orthodox churches.
1533 - Atahualpa, king of the Inca empire, is executed on orders of conquistador Francisco Pizarro, after the Indian leader paid the Spaniard's ransom demand - one roomful of gold and two of silver.
1809 - Revolt breaks out in upper Peru against Spanish authority.
1855 - Britain's Parliament establishes responsible government throughout Australian states, except for Western Australia.
1921 - Greek forces defeat Turks at Kutania in Turkey.
1925 - First elected parliament in Iraq opens in Baghdad.
1940 - Hitler gives orders to prepare the invasion of Britain.
1941 - German forces pierce Soviet Stalin Line and take Smolensk.
1945 - First atomic bomb is exploded by the United States over desert in New Mexico, heralding start of atomic age.
1949 - Chinese Nationalists organise Supreme Council under Chiang Kai-Shek which begins to move forces to Taiwan.
1951 - Belgium's King Leopold III abdicates and is succeeded by his son Baudouin.
1966 - India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ends visit to Moscow with promise of $1bn in Soviet aid for her country.
1969 - US Apollo 11 spacecraft is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to land first men on Moon.
1979 - Saddam Hussein takes over as president of Iraq.
1991 - US tentatively decides to give up Clark Air Base in Philippines after the base is damaged in volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo earlier in the year.
1993 - The Republic of Congo's democratically elected government imposes a 15-day state of emergency to put down an armed rebellion in the capital by the former military dictator.
1994 - The first fragment from comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashes into Jupiter, creating a 1 930-kilometre-wide fireball.
1995 - Four months after they strayed across the border into Iraq, two Americans are released from their maximum-security prison.
1996 - In Kiev, Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko narrowly escapes an assassination attempt when a bomb explodes near his motorcade.
1997 - Parliament of the Yugoslav Federation elects Slobodan Milosevic as president in a hastily organized vote condemned by opposition parties.
1998 - The United Nations says it is pulling its human rights mission out of Rwanda after it failed to reach an agreement with the government on a new mandate.
1999 - A plane piloted by John F Kennedy Jr, son of the late president, disappears over the sea north of Long Island, New York. The plane also carried his wife and sister-in-law. The wreckage is found five days later and the bodies are recovered.
2000 - Helicopters ferry 170 UN peacekeepers to safety as other troops retreat on foot, ending a dramatic rescue mission two months after the soldiers were surrounded and cut off by Sierra Leonean rebels.
2001 - Russia and China sign their first friendship treaty in more than half a century.
2002 - The Provisional Irish Republican Army apologizes for the deaths of non-combatants in the largely Roman Catholic paramilitary organisation's 30-year campaign to reunite Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland.
2003 - United Nations war-crimes court convicts four former officers of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic Albanian guerrilla force that clashed with government troops in the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict.
2004 - Fire sweeps through a school in southern India, killing at least 80 children and injuring more than 100 others, many of them critically.
2005 - Negotiators of the Free Aceh Movement and the Indonesian government reach a tentative agreement to end the long-running war in the tsunami-ravaged Aceh province.
2006 - Hezbollah guerrillas fire a barrage of rockets into Haifa, killing eight people in the worst attack on Israel since violence broke out a week earlier along the border with Lebanon.
2007 - A 6.8 magnitude earthquake strikes northwestern Japan, causing a fire and radioactive water leak at the world's largest nuclear plant. At least eight people are killed and hundreds injured.
2008 - Israel frees notorious Lebanese militant Samir Kantar and four others after Hezbollah guerrillas hand over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.
Today's Birthdays:
Sir Joshua Reynolds, English artist (1723-1792); Camille Corot, French painter (1796-1875); Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer (1872-1928); Trygve Lie, Norwegian statesman and UN Secretary-General (1896-1968); Ginger Rogers, US actress (1911-1995); Corin Redgrave, British actor (1939--); Michael Flatley, Irish dancer, ex-Lord of the Dance (1958--); Will Ferrell, US actor (1967--).
Thought For Today:
He who tells the truth must have one foot in the stirrup - Armenian proverb.
Sapa-AP