Tuesday, July 6

2004-07-05 14:07

Today is Tuesday, July 6, the 187th day of 2004. There are 178 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1535 - Sir Thomas More executed in England on the orders of Henry VIII for advocating separation of church and state.

1699 - Pirate captain William Kidd is taken into custody in Boston, Massachusetts. He is later hanged in England.

1747 - France and Spain break combined blockade by British fleet and troops of Austria's Maria Theresa at Genoa, Italy.

1792 - Sir Andries Stockenstrom, future Lieutenant-Governor of the Eastern Province, is born at the Cape.

1809 - Pope Pius VII, having excommunicated Napoleon Bonaparte, is taken prisoner by the French.

1908 - Young Turks under Niazi Bey stage revolt at Resina in Macedonia. Government troops sent to quell the riot desert.

1916 - Second-Lieutenant William Nimmo Brown of the 1st SA Infantry is killed in the Battle of the Somme and becomes the first South African officer killed in France during World War I.

1917 - Arab horsemen led by British officer TE Lawrence - also known as Lawrence of Arabia - capture the heavily garrisoned Turkish fort at Aqaba.

1919 - British dirigible lands at New York's Roosevelt Field, marking first crossing of Atlantic Ocean by an airship.

1923 - The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is formed.

1945 - Nicaragua becomes the first nation to formally accept the UN.

1964 - Nyasaland Protectorate, renamed Malawi, becomes independent within British Commonwealth.

1967 - Fighting breaks out between Nigerian troops and those of the newly proclaimed "Republic of Biafra." The fighting later flares into a full-scale, two-year war.

1968 - Solomon Islands become independent from Britain.

1971 - Kamuzu Banda declares himself president for life in Malawi.

1972 - South Vietnamese capture Communist-occupied Quang Tri city.

1976 - The government announces that the compulsory teaching of Afrikaans in black schools is to be dropped. The announcement follows the Soweto riots of the previous month.

1986 - Two Australians are hanged in Malaysia for drug trafficking, the first Westerners executed under Malaysia's strict drug laws.

1987 - A 52-strong delegation, led by Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine, leaves for talks with the African National Congress in Dakar, Senegal.

1988 - Two explosions rock Windhoek. The first, in a Klein Windhoek butchery, kills one person and injures 18 others. The second, in Katatura township, damages an army truck.

1989 - Iranian leader Ali Khamenei urges Muslims to defy Saudi Arabian ban on political activity in holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

1990 - Nato allies pledge to reduce both nuclear and conventional forces in Europe in show of friendship to Soviet Union.

1990 - An explosion rips through a taxi rank and bus terminus in Johannesburg's business centre, leaving scores of people injured.

1991 - UN nuclear inspection team arrives in Iraq to test President Saddam Hussein's promise of full cooperation, while second team witnesses destruction of Iraq's last known long-range missiles.

1992 - French first lady Danielle Mitterrand narrowly escapes getting killed as car bomb explodes near her motorcade in Iraq.

1994 - The military government of Nigeria charges Moshood Abiola, the winner of an annulled presidential vote in 1993, with treason. He dies in prison in 1998.

1995 - Floods cut through some of southern China's poorest, most isolated areas, raising the death toll to near 600.

1996 - Taliban rockets smash into a crowded market in central Kabul, Afghanistan, killing eight people, including five children.

1997 - Opposition leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas wins the first mayoral election in Mexico City.

1998 - Thirteen people are killed when a concrete bridge under construction over the Marite River at Inyaka Dam, about 10km from Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga, collapses.

1999 - The East Rand Proprietary Mines (ERPM) at Boksburg is granted provisional liquidation. The company announces it will be retrenching its entire workforce of 5 000.

2000 - A heat wave baking southeastern Europe sends temperatures soaring to 45 degrees Celsius, killing 25 people, while firefighters battle hundreds of blazes sparked by the arid conditions in the region.

2001 - Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen pleads guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy to spy for Russia. Believed to be partly responsible for the deaths of at least three spies, he is later sentenced to life in prison without parole.

2002 - Two unidentified gunmen kill Afghan Vice President and Minister of Public Works Haji Abdul Qadir outside his office in Kabul. Qadir's slaying marks the second assassination of an Afghan cabinet minister in five months since the US-backed post-Taliban government was formed.

2003 - Liberian President Charles Taylor accepts an offer of asylum in nearby Nigeria. US President George W Bush made Taylor's departure a condition of US troops joining an international peacekeeping force in Liberia

Today's Birthdays:

Frida Kahlo, Mexican artist (1907-1954); Janet Leigh, US actress (1927-); Sylvester Stallone, US actor (1946-); the Dalai Lama, exiled Tibetan leader (1935-); Nanci Griffith, US country singer (1953-).

Thought For Today:

Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form - Andre Maurois, French author (1885-1967. - Sapa-AP

- SAPA