Wednesday, August 10

2005-08-10 15:58

Today is Wednesday, August 10, the 222nd day of 2005. There are 143 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1566 - Iconoclastic riots by fanatical Calvinists break out in the Netherlands.

1627 - French forces under Cardinal Richelieu begin siege of La Rochelle, held by Huguenots. Three-quarters of its inhabitants die of starvation during the 15-month siege.

1628 - The Swedish warship Vasa capsizes in Stockholm harbour on its maiden voyage. It is raised in 1961.

1741 - Prussia's King Frederick II takes Breslau in Poland.

1787 - Turkey declares war on Russia, fearing designs on Georgia.

1792 - French monarchy is overthrown when mobs in Paris attack palace of King Louis XVI.

1842 - Lord Ashley's Mine Act prohibits women and children under 10 from working underground in Britain.

1885 - Leo Daft opens America's first commercially operated electric streetcar, in Baltimore.

1897 - A young researcher at German chemical firm Bayer, Felix Hoffman, first synthesises acetylsalicylic acid, aspirin's active ingredient.

1904 - Japan's navy cripples Russian fleet off Port Arthur.

1913 - Bulgaria gives up its claim to Macedonia in a peace treaty signed in Bucharest, ending Second Balkan War. Tensions remain in the region, exploding a year later in World War1.

1914 - France declares war on Austria-Hungary at the start of World War 1.

1945 - Japan offers to surrender in World War 2 if Emperor Hirohito is permitted to keep his throne.

1962 - Soviet Union rejects proposed US inspection plan as part of any disarmament agreement.

1969 - Leno and Rosemary LaBianca are murdered in their Los Angeles home by members of Charles Manson's cult, one day after US actress Sharon Tate and four other people are slain.

1972 - The US House defeats an end-the-war amendment for withdrawal of all US forces from Indochina. This was caused by a split in anti-war forces over the pullout date from Vietnam.

1975 - Nationalist China resumes air flights to Japan. Taiwan had severed plane service in April 1974, in retaliation for an aviation agreement Japan had signed with China.

1977 - US postal employee David Berkowitz is arrested in Yonkers, New York after being accused of being the "Son of Sam" gunman responsible for six random slayings and wounding seven people. He is serving six consecutive terms of 25 years to life in state prison.

1980 - Two Britons, Telery Jones, 43, and her son Owen, 18, abducted off their farm by 20 pro-Cuban National Liberation Army guerrillas on January 5, are released.

1983 - With support from Libya in their long-running civil war, Chadian insurgents overrun the outpost of Faya-Largeau in northern Chad.

1987 - Police disperse striking mine workers who halted rail and road travel as more than 100 strikes cripple South Korea's industries.

1988 - US President Ronald Reagan signs a measure providing $20 000 payments to Japanese-Americans interned by the US government during World War 2.

1993 - The United States says Bosnian Serbs could face a Nato airstrike unless they abandon positions on two strategic mountains near Sarajevo. The Serbs evacuate four days later.

1994 - Feminist Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin, under a death threat from Islamic extremists, flees to Sweden.

1995 - Two of Saddam Hussein's daughters, their husbands and a group of army officers flee to Jordan. King Hussein grants them political asylum.

1996 - Chechen rebels drive back Russian troops from the centre of Grozny and withstand barrages of Russian aircraft and artillery fire.

1997 - Photos of British Princess Diana embracing film producer Dodi Fayed are published in the London Sunday Mirror, raising speculation about her future.

1998 - More than 2 000 people die in flooding in China.

1999 - Rebel-allied soldiers free some 200 remaining captives in Sierra Leone, who were kidnapped during a scheduled handover of civilians abducted during Sierra Leone's eight-year civil war.

2002 - Turkey's economy minister, Kemal Dervis, resigns from the government of ailing Premier Bulent Ecevit ahead of early November elections.

2003 - A judicial inquiry into the July suicide of British government weapons scientist David Kelly is held. Kelly was found dead days after being questioned about whether he was the source for a May British Broadcasting Corp. report alleging that the British government had doctored a September 2002 intelligence dossier to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraqi weapons programs.

Today's Birthdays:

Count Camillo Cavour, Italian statesman (1810-1861); Jay Cooke, US financier (1821-1905); Charles Keene, British artist and illustrator (1823-1891); Alexander Glazounov, Russian composer (1865-1936); Herbert Hoover, US president (1874-1964); Leo Fender, US guitar manufacturer (1909-1991); Rosanna Arquette, US actress (1959--); Antonio Banderas, Spanish actor (1960--).

Thought For Today:

Literature is news that stays news - Ezra Pound, American poet-critic (1885-1972).

- SAPA