Today in History, 6/4

HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE

1199 - King Richard I - Richard the Lionheart - dies after being wounded while besieging the castle of Chalus in France; he is succeeded by his brother John.

1520 - Italian Renaissance painter Raphael dies in Rome, aged 37.

1789 - George Washington is elected first president of the United States.

1830 - Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) is founded by Joseph Smith at Fayette in New York State.

1832 - Australian soldier Thomas Brennan is executed for discharging a firearm at an officer.

1895 - Waltzing Matilda, one of Australia's best-known tunes with words by Banjo Paterson, is first publicly performed at a hotel in the remote northern town of Winton.

1896 - Opening of the first modern Olympics takes place in Athens.

1909 - US explorers Matthew Henson and Robert Peary become the first men to reach the North Pole.

1928 - Italy's fascist government bans handshaking as being unhygienic.

1941 - German bombers attack Belgrade. About 2500 people die, and hundreds of buildings burn down, including the National Library with countless medieval manuscripts.

1955 - Sir Winston Churchill is succeeded by Sir Anthony Eden as British Prime Minister.

1965 - Early Bird I, the world's first commercial communications satellite, is launched from Cape Kennedy, Florida.

1971 - Death of Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky in New York City.

1984 - Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean vote to integrate with Australia, ending the 150-year rule of the British Clunies-Ross family.

1991 - Iraq reluctantly accepts UN conditions for ending the Gulf War.

1993 - A tank of radioactive waste explodes and burns at a weapons plant in the secret Siberian city of Tomsk-7, contaminating a vast area.

1994 - The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi are killed in a plane crash in Rwanda, setting off the slaughter of 500,000 Rwandans, mostly minority Tutsis, over the next few months.

1998 - Country singer Tammy Wynette dies aged 55 at her home in Nashville, Tennessee.

1999 - Anti-independence fighters, allegedly backed by Indonesian troops, shoot and hack terrified villagers to death outside a church in East Timor.

2003 - The US Justice Department reports that the number of people in US prisons in 2002 exceeded two million for the first time.

2005 - Death of Monaco's Prince Rainier III, who turned one of the world's smallest states from a faded gambling centre into a billionaires' haven, aged 81.

2009 - Italy's deadliest earthquake in nearly three decades strikes the central city of L'Aquila, killing more than 150 people, injuring 1500 and leaving thousands homeless.

2014 - US actor Mickey Rooney, a star since the 1930s, dies aged 93.

2017 - Ben McCormack from the Nine Network's A Current Affair program is charged with sending child pornography material after police raid the network's Sydney offices.

TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS

Gustave Moreau, French artist (1826-1898); Oscar Strauss, Austrian composer (1870-1954); Anthony Fokker, Dutch aircraft designer (1890-1939); Gordon Chater, Australian actor (1922-1999); James Watson, US scientist and co-discoverer of DNA (1928-); Merle Haggard, US singer (1937-); Barry Levinson, US film director (1942-); Max Clifford, disgraced publicist (1943-2017); Graeme Base, Australian illustrator and author (1958-); Frank Black, US singer/songwriter (1965-); Zach Braff, US actor (1975-).

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy. - Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, French philosopher (1689-1755)

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