This Day in History - August 13

Today is the 225th day of 2010. There are 140 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight

2006: On his 80th birthday, Fidel Castro cautions Cubans that he faces a long recovery from surgery. His younger brother, Raul, makes a first public appearance as Cuba's interim president.

Other Notable Events

1521: Spaniard Hernando Cortes captures Tenochtitlan, completing the defeat of the Aztec Empire.

1792: French revolutionaries imprison France's royal family.

1814: Britain agrees to hand back all Dutch colonial possessions including Indonesia.

1898: US forces in Philippines capture Manila from Spaniards in Spanish-American War.

1937: Japanese attack Chinese city of Shanghai.

1961: East Germany seals off border between East and West Berlin, closing Brandenburg Gate to halt people fleeing the country.

1976: South Africa pledges support for US effort to bring about negotiated settlement in Rhodesia, saying failure would invite Communist intervention.

1983: The Indian government starts to erect a barbed-wire fence along the entire 2,500-mile (4,000-kilometre) border with Bangladesh to prevent the entry of illegal aliens. Resentment of Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh flared into weeks of violence in which 3,000 were killed.

1990: President Mikhail S Gorbachev issues a decree absolving of wrongdoing the millions of victims of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin who had not been formally rehabilitated.

1993: A six-storey hotel in Thailand crashes down, killing at least 24 people, injuring about 350, and trapping dozens in the debris.

1994: Bosnian Serb leaders rebuff a top UN official's plea to accept an international peace plan that would give them 49 per cent of Bosnia.

2001: Macedonia's rival political leaders sign a landmark peace accord aimed at ending six months of bloody conflicts and clearing the way for NATO troops to disarm ethnic Albanian rebels.

2002: Iranian President Mohammed Khatami criticises the US campaign against terrorism, saying Washington "misused" worldwide outrage over the September 11 attacks in order to "use the fight against terrorism to impose its power on other countries".

2003: Libya and families of victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland sign an agreement to pay as much as $2.7 billion in reparations. The agreement also called for Libya to acknowledge responsibility for the bombing.

2008: Mexico announces it will build a US$1.27 billion tunnel that will be almost 39 miles (62 kilometres) long and seven yards (metres) in diameter, to help solve the centuries-old drainage problem of the nation's capital.

Today's Birthdays

Andes Angstroem, Swedish physicist (1814-1874); Albert Sorel, French historian (1824-1906); John Logie Baird, British inventor of television (1888-1946); Alfred Hitchcock, British film director (1899-1980); Makarios III, first president of Cyprus (1913-1977); Fidel Castro, Cuban leader (1926-); Kathleen Battle, US soprano (1948-); Paul Greengrass, film director (1955-).

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments

  0 comments