Tuesday, August 3

2005-08-03 15:57

Today is Tuesday, August 3, the 215th day of 2004. There are 150 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1460 - King James II of Scotland is killed by the blast of a cannon saluting the arrival of his wife, Queen Mary, at Roxburgh Castle, England.

1492 - Christopher Columbus sets sail from Palos, Spain, looking for a route to India across the Atlantic, discovering instead the New World.

1571 - The Ottomans massacre inhabitants of Famagusta, Cyprus, after an 11-month siege.

1589 - Henry of Navarre, first of the Bourbon line, succeeds the assassinated Henry III as king of France.

1645 - Denmark loses much land to Sweden at peace of Broemsebro.

1675 - French defeat Dutch and Spanish fleets in Bay of Palermo and take Sicily.

1803 - Second Mahratha War against Sindhia of Gwalliori in Central India begins with British offensive.

1881 - The Pretoria Convention restores the independence of the Transvaal.

1914 - Germany declares war on France at the start of World War I.

1943 - Anti-Nazi demonstrations are held in Milan, Genoa and other northern Italian cities during World War II.

1948 - Whittaker Chambers, a confessed Communist, accuses former US State Department official Alger Hiss of being a Communist agent. Hiss is convicted of perjury.

1956 - Gold Coast League Assembly adopts Kwame Nkrumah's resolution demanding independence from Britain.

1958 - Atomic-powered US submarine Nautilus makes its first undersea crossing of North Pole.

1961- Two US airliners are hijacked: a French Algerian gunman seizes a plane from Mexico City, forcing the pilot to land in Cuba. An American ex-convict and his 16-year-old son attempt to hijack a Phoenix plane to Cuba, but are thwarted by the pilot.

1969 - Israeli government leaders announce they will retain the Golan Heights, Gaza Strip and a major part of the eastern and southern Sinai Peninsula - the areas captured from the Arabs in the June 1967 war.

1974 - The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) declare a de facto cease-fire between rebel and Portuguese troops.

1978 - Israeli planes strike a Palestinian guerrilla base in Lebanon after a terrorist bomb kills one person and injures 50 in a Tel Aviv market earlier in the day.

1987 - University of Cape Town students disrupt an annual campus dinner, forcing guest speaker Dennis Worrall to leave.

1987 - Russia's Mikhail Gorbachev says the collapse of apartheid is inevitable and calls for a settlement that would benefit all races.

1988 - The British government admits receiving 1100 tons of uranium from Namibia in defiance of the United Nations ban.

1990 - The United States and the Soviet Union jointly condemn Iraq's invasion of Kuwait while Iraqi troops begin massing along Kuwaiti border with Saudi Arabia.

1991 - Russian branch formally breaks off from the Soviet Union's Communist Party to form a new party led by reform-minded Communists.

1993 - The United Nations begins its withdrawal of 20 000 peacekeepers in Cambodia.

1995 - Delegates from some 100 nations agree at the United Nations on a global treaty to prevent overfishing on the high seas.

1997 - Political moderate Mohammad Khatami takes over as president of Iran.

1998 - Kashmiri guerrillas kill 34 construction workers in northern India.

1999 - The US Justice Department rules that the government must pay the heirs of Abraham Zapruder US$16 million for his film of President John F Kennedy's assassination.

2000 - The European Union opens an antitrust case against Microsoft.

2001 - The International Monetary Fund announces it will loan US$1.2 billion loan to Argentina and extend US$15 billion line of credit to Brazil.

2002 - Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian calls for legislation that would allow a referendum to be conducted on whether to declare independence from China.

2003 - The United Arab Emirates-based Al Arabiya satellite television network broadcasts an audiotape warning allegedly from Ayman al-Zawahiri, a top deputy of al-Qaeda, that the US will pay a "dear price" if it harmed any prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Today's Birthdays:

James Wyatt, English architect (1746-1813)
Koshaku Yamagata Aritomo, first prime minister of Japan (1838-1922)
Dolores del Rio, US-Mexican film star (1905-1983)
P(hyllis) D(orothy) James, British mystery writer (1920--)
Tony Bennett, US singer (1926--)
Martin Sheen, US actor (1940--)
Martha Stewart, US lifestyle guru (1941--).

Thought For Today:

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full - Marcel Proust, French author (1871-1922).

- SAPA