July 16

2008-07-16 08:27

Today is Wednesday, July 16, the 198th day of 2008. 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 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 organised 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 apologises for the deaths of noncombatants 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.

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

- SAPA