Today In History June 10

HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE

1190 - Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa drowns trying to cross the Saleph River in Cilicia (now in Turkey) while on the Third Crusade to free Jerusalem.

1793 - First public zoo, the Jardin des Plantes, opens in Paris.

1794 - Power of French revolutionary tribunals is increased, leading to mass executions.

1835 - Formation of Australia's first political party, the Australian Patriotic Party.

1865 - The first performance of Richard Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde takes place in Munich.

1838 - At least 28 unarmed Aboriginals are killed at Myall Creek, in central NSW, by a group of stockmen. Seven men are later found guilty and hanged for the massacre.

1906 - Death of Richard John Seddon, prime minister of New Zealand (1893-1906).

1908 - Australia's federal parliament passes the Invalid and Old-Age Pensions Act, offering means-tested financial support to the elderly and infirm.

1917 - Sinn Fein riots break out in Dublin.

1933 - Australian Women's Weekly is first published.

1935 - Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio, by William G Wilson and Dr Robert Smith.

1940 - Italy enters World War II against France and Britain as Germany's ally.

1941 - Recruiting begins for the Torres Strait Defence Force.

1943 - Hungarian journalist Laszlo Biro patents his ball-point pen.

1944 - Nazi troops massacre nearly all the residents of Oradour-sur-Glane, France, in a reprisal against the French resistance movement.

The last Japanese aircraft is shot down by the RAAF in the New Guinea campaign.

1960 - Fokker Friendship crashes at Mackay, north Queensland, killing 29.

1977 - James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, escapes from prison in Tennessee with six others.
He is recaptured three days later.

1988 - Riot police in South Korea block thousands of students trying to march to North Korea for reunification talks.

1989 - China and Taiwan open direct telephone links; 1000 students are arrested after students battle riot police in demand for overthrow of South Korean President Roh Tae-woo.

1991 - Iraqi troops begin attacking Shi'ite Muslims in southern Iraq who rebelled after Gulf War.

1993 - Scientists announce they have extracted genetic material from the preserved remains of an insect that lived when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

1994 - In one incident of the Rwandan genocide, Hutu militiamen massacre 170 people hiding in a Roman Catholic church.

1996 - Australian swimmer Susie Maroney claims record by swimming from Cuba to the US in 37 hours, tour du lịch quế lâm despite falling short of land.

1997 - Top Khmer Rouge lieutenant Son Sen and his family are executed on the orders of leader Pol Pot.

1998 - President Nursultan Nazarbayev formally opens Kazakhstan's new capital city Astana.

1999 - Yugoslav troops begin pulling out of Kosovo and NATO suspends its punishing 78-day air war.

2001 - Media baron Silvio Berlusconi becomes Italy's prime minister for the second time after his party wins 30 per cent of the vote, more than any other party.

His government is Italy's 59th since World War II.

2002 - India reopens its airspace to Pakistani commercial flights, in the first signs that it is ready to ease the standoff over the border shared by the two nations in Kashmir.

2003 - Former Lebanon hostage Terry Waite, 64, who was chained to the wall of a Beirut cell for nearly five years, kynghidongduong.vn agrees to spend a day in a British prison to raise money for charity.

2004 - Ray Charles, who overcame poverty, blindness and heroin addiction to become one of America's most beloved entertainers and to be hailed as The Father of Soul, dies aged 73.

2005 - Some 117 people, most of them children, drown when a flash flood sweeps through a primary school in China's northeastern Heilongjiang province.

2006 - Three Guantanamo Bay detainees hang themselves, tour du lịch quế lâm the first reported deaths among the hundreds of men held at the base in Cuba on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

2008 - The chief of Saddam Hussein's tribal clan is killed by a bomb glued to the undercarriage of his car.

2010 - Pope Benedict XVI strongly defends celibacy for priests as a sign of faith in an increasingly secular world during a rally that draws some 15,000 priests from around the world to Rome.

2011 - In a stern rebuke, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warns that the future of the historic NATO military alliance is at risk because of European penny-pinching and distaste for front-line combat and says the US won't carry the alliance as a charity case.

2012 - Opposition leader Henri Capriles marches through the Venezuelan capital of Caracas accompanied by hundreds of thousands of supporters as he formally launches his campaign to run against President Hugo Chavez.

2013 - Bombs explode across Iraq, killing at least 70 people.

2014 - Jihadist followers of the al-Qaeda splinter group ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) seize Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, in a spectacular blow to the Shi'ite-led government of Nuri al-Maliki.

Australia Post announces it will cut 900 jobs over the next year.

2016 - Mourners line the streets of Muhammad Ali's hometown of Louisville to farewell the boxing great who died aged 74.

2017 - New security measures are announced for Melbourne's CBD to combat the threat of terrorism, including temporary bollards at some of the city's most crowded places.

2018 - Perth's "grand old lady" Princess Margaret Hospital closes after 109 years as sick children are moved without a hitch to the newly opened Perth's Children's Hospital.

2019 - Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam refuses to back down on controversial extradition laws and is accused as a "puppet" for Beijing by the pro-democracy movement.

Today's Birthdays:

Gustave Courbet, French artist (1819-1877); Nikolaus August Otto, German developer of internal combustion engine (1832-1891); Henry Stanley, English explorer (1840-1904); Lang Hancock, Australian mining magnate (1909-1992); Saul Bellow, US novelist and Nobel laureate (1915-2005); Britain's Prince Philip (1921-); Judy Garland, US singer-actor (1922-1969); Robert Maxwell, Czech-born British media tycoon (1923-1991); Maurice Sendak, author of Where The Wild Things Are (1928-2012); Ian McCahon Sinclair, Australian politician (1929-); David Walker, Australian racing driver (1941-); Tony Mundine, Australian boxer (1951-); John Edwards, American politician and lawyer (1953-); Jeanne Tripplehorn, US actor (1963-); Tony Martin, New Zealand comedian (1964-); Elizabeth Hurley, British actress (1965-); Justin Eveson, Australian Paralympic athlete (1970-); Kyle Sandilands, Australian radio host (1971-); Faith Evans, US singer (1973-); Tara Lipinski, US Olympic champion ice skater (1982-); Kate Upton, US model and actress (1992-).

Thought for Today:

History is worth reading when it tells us truly what the attitude toward life was in the past - Dorothy Canfield Fisher, American author (1879-1958).