On this day - July 21
2009-07-21 08:00
Today is Tuesday, July 21, the 202nd day of 2009. There are 163 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1542 - Pope Paul III establishes the Roman Inquisition to fight Protestantism.
1683 - Lord William Russell is beheaded in England for plotting to kill the king.
1718 - Austria and Venice gain substantial lands in the Balkans from Turkey by the Peace of Passarowitz.
1773 - Pope Clement XIV dissolves Roman Catholic Jesuit order after pressure from anti-clerical countries, but the order is re-established in 1814.
1798 - France's Napoleon Bonaparte defeats the Egyptians at Battle of the Pyramids and becomes master of Egypt.
1820 - Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted announces his discovery that an electrical current creates a magnetic field.
1831 - Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg is crowned the first king of newly independent Belgium, prompting the Dutch to invade.
1861 - The Confederate army defeats Union troops at the Battle of Bull Run in the US state of Virginia at the start of the American Civil War.
1873 - Jesse James and his gang pull off the first train robbery in America taking $3 000 from the Rock Island Express in Adair, Iowa.
1920 - Sinn Fein and unions riot in Belfast, Ireland. King Faisal recognizes French mandate in Syria.
1925 - In Dayton, Tennessee, John T Scopes is convicted of violating state law for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution. The conviction is later overturned.
1944 - American forces land on Guam during World War II.
1954 - An armistice is signed in Geneva, dividing Vietnam into a communist north and a US-supported south as France surrenders North Vietnam to the Communists.
1959 - US District Court judge in New York City rules that DH Lawrence's famous book Lady Chatterley's Lover is not pornographic.
1960 - Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon-now Sri Lanka-becomes the world's first woman prime minister.
1962 - Indian and Chinese troops clash in two disputed areas of Kashmir.
1969 - US Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin Jr blast off from Moon and head back to Earth after man's first lunar landing.
1973 - France explodes nuclear device over South Pacific island despite worldwide protests.
1974 - United States announces that Greece and Turkey agree to cease-fire in war on island of Cyprus.
1975 - Soviet Soyuz spacecraft lands safely in Soviet Central Asia after its rendezvous in space with US Apollo craft.
1989 - Top Communist Party leaders in Soviet Union call for sterner restrictions on the press.
1991 - South African government admits it secretly gave $600 000 in recent years to African National Congress rival Inkatha Party.
1994 - Former dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn returns to Moscow 20 years after he was expelled.
1995 - A 16-nation conference in London warns Bosnia's Serbs that further moves on the UN "safe area" of Gorazde will be met with a "substantial and decisive response".
1998 - Concerned that violence in Kosovo could spill over, the UN Security Council decides to add about 300 troops to the 750-strong UN peacekeeping force in Macedonia.
2000 - Bolivian drug trafficker, Roberto Suarez Gomez, self-proclaimed "King of Cocaine" dies at age 68. He is believed to be the model for the acclaimed US movie Scarface.
2001 - Flash floods triggered by torrential rain and hailstorms leave at least 30 people dead and 100 injured in northwest Iran.
2002 - WorldCom Inc, the second-largest US telecommunications company, files for the largest US bankruptcy ever, a month after disclosing it had inflated cash flow by $3.8bn.
2003 - The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) reports that so far more than 1 000 Iraqi children had been killed or injured by abandoned weapons and unexploded ordnance.
2004 - Saudi security forces discover the head of American hostage Paul M Johnson Jr in a freezer during a raid on a suspected al-Qaida hideout, just days before the expiration of a month long amnesty offered to militants.
2005 - Rioters enraged by subsidy cuts clash with security forces for a second day across Yemen, burning cars and buildings and leaving 16 people dead in the country's worst civil strife in more than a decade.
2006 - Israel moves tanks and troops to its border, calling up reserves and warning civilians to flee Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon as it prepares for a likely ground invasion.
2007 - India elects Pratibha Patil as the country's first female president. The 72-year-old candidate of the governing Congress party received 65.82% of the votes, defeating incumbent Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.
2008 - Radovan Karadzic, a former Bosnian Serb leader and one of the world's top war crimes fugitives, is arrested in a Belgrade suburb by Serbian security forces.
Today's Birthdays:
Saint Philip Neri, Italian churchman (1515-1595); Baron Paul Julius von Reuter, German-born news service pioneer (1816-1899); Ernest Hemingway, US author and Nobel laureate (1899-1961); Marshall McLuhan, Canadian media theorist (1911-1980); Isaac Stern, Russian-born violinist (1920-2001); Don Knotts, US actor (1924-2006); Norman Jewison, Canadian director (1926--); Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens), British pop singer (1948--); Robin Williams, US actor (1951--); Josh Hartnett, US actor (1978--).
Thought For today:
A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice - Edgar Watson Howe, American editor and author (1853-1937).