On this day - June 7
2010-06-07 08:07
Today is Monday, June 7, the 158th day of 2010. There are 207 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1099 - The First Crusade reaches its target, Jerusalem, and starts to besiege the city.
1494 - Spain and Portugal, by Treaty of Tordesillas, agree to divide the New World between themselves.
1546 - Peace of Ardres ends England's war with France and Scotland.
1557 - England declares war on France as an ally of Spain, and Scots invade England.
1672 - Dutch defeat combined British and French fleet in Southwold Bay, England.
1862 - Britain and United States sign treaty to suppress the slave trade.
1905 - Norwegian Storting, or parliament, votes for separation from Sweden.
1921 - First Parliament of Northern Ireland opens.
1940 - Organised resistance against German invaders ends in Norway in World War II.
1942 - Battle of Midway in Pacific ends in major US victory over Japanese in World War II.
1967 - Israeli forces reach banks of Suez Canal in Egypt, two days into Six-Day War.
1970 - Voters in Switzerland reject proposal to force almost one-third of a million aliens to leave that country.
1975 - United States withdraws its last combat aircraft based on Taiwan.
1987 - Senior Communist Party and government officials in Czechoslovakia are implicated in major corruption trial.
1988 - First contingent of Indian troops sent to Sri Lanka 10 months previously to enforce peace accord between the government and Tamil Tiger rebels is withdrawn.
1989 - Foreign embassies rush to get their citizens out of Beijing after crackdown against pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
1990 - US House of Representatives votes to bar the sale of computers and telecommunications gear to Soviet Union until Moscow begins negotiating Lithuania's independence.
1991 - Algerian government, facing mounting unrest, announces that presidential elections will be held before year's end.
1992 - Ebulfaz Elcibey wins Azerbaijan's first multiparty presidential election.
1993 - Newly elected President Ramiro de Leon Carpio shuffles Guatemala's hard-line military command, replacing them with moderates.
1994 - After two months of genocide, the United States agrees to a UN peacekeeping mission to Rwanda after receiving assurances that UN troops would not be called on to fight.
1995 - Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui is greeted in California by a cheering crowd of ethnic Chinese as he becomes the island's first president to set foot in the United States.
1996 - Negotiators in Vienna agree on how and when to reduce arms stockpiles across the former Yugoslavia.
1997 - Foreigners flee heavy fighting between rival militias in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.
1998 - Lebanon holds its first municipal elections in 35 years. Muslim and Christian voters in Beirut endorse religious harmony.
1999 - Indonesians vote in democratic elections for the first time since 1955. More than 96% turnout for the unexpectedly peaceful voting.
2000 - A suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber shatters Sri Lanka's first-ever War Heroes Day, killing a Cabinet minister and 20 others during a fund-raiser for the families of slain soldiers.
2001 - Former Argentine president Carlos Menem is placed under house arrest as part of an alleged arms trafficking probe. He is released in November after Argentina's Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors failed to prove he led the conspiracy.
2002 - Israeli troops shell Yasser Arafat's headquarters. The previous day 17 people were killed in a Palestinian suicide attack that detonated a car bomb by a crowded bus.
2003 - A vehicle packed with explosives detonates next to a bus carrying German peacekeeping troops in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, killing four soldiers including an Afghan bystander and wounding 31 others.
2004 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon survives no-confidence votes in parliament, a sign that his coalition is in no immediate danger of collapse, despite Cabinet approval of a divisive Gaza withdrawal plan a day earlier.
2005 - Riot police in La Paz fire tear gas and clash with protesters demanding more power for Bolivia's impoverished Indian majority as an offer by the president to resign fails to halt a crippling blockade in the Bolivian capital.
2006 - King Abdullah II of Jordan warns that his country can never again serve as a "substitute homeland" for Palestinians, signalling that Jordan fears a destabilising flood of refugees if Israel unilaterally redraws its borders.
2007 - Cyclone Gonu batters Oman's coast, flooding highways and tearing down trees and power lines but sparing the region's oil industry. At least 23 people are killed in deaths related to the cyclone - a rarity in the Middle East.
2008 - Hillary Rodham Clinton formally ends her historic bid for the White House and urges her supporters to rally behind ex-rival Barack Obama, who goes on to win the US presidency.
2009 - Conservatives race toward victory in some of Europe's largest economies as initial results and exit polls show voters punishing left-leaning parties in European Parliament elections in France, Germany and elsewhere.
Today's Birthdays:
Alexander Pushkin, Russian writer (1799-1837); Paul Gauguin, French painter (1848-1903); Henry Lawson, Australian poet (1867-1922); Imre Nagy, Hungarian premier (1896-1958); Tom Jones, Welsh-born pop singer (1940--); Liam Neeson, actor (1952--); Orhan Pamuk, Turkish writer (1952--); William Forsythe, US actor (1955--); Prince, US rock singer (1958--), Dave Navarro, US rock guitarist (1967--).
Thought For Today:
Some seek bread; and some seek wealth and ease; and some seek fame, but all are seeking rest - Frederick Langbridge, English clergyman and author (1849-1922).
- Sapa-AP