This Day in History
Today, Tuesday, June 1, is the 152nd day of 2010. There are 213 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight
1997: Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, is fatally burned in a fire set off by her 12-year-old grandson in her Yonkers, New York, apartment.
Other Notable Events
1479: The University of Copenhagen, Denmark, is founded.
1869: New Spanish Constitution is promulgated, continuing the monarchy but allowing universal male suffrage and freedom of religion.
1936: After a war of conquest, Ethiopia is annexed by Benito Mussolini’s Italy.
1958: Charles de Gaulle becomes premier of France.
1967: The Beatles release their landmark album, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
1968: Author/lecturer Helen Keller, who earned a college degree despite being blind and deaf most of her life, dies in Westport, Connecticut.
1973: The Greek military regime abolishes the monarchy.
1980: CNN, the Cable News Network, makes its debut in the US.
1992: Ecologists, diplomats and native people from around the world gather in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, for the 12-day Earth Summit.
1994: South Africa rejoins the British Commonwealth, 33 years after leaving over apartheid.
1996: Russia announces that the ruble, whose value had been strictly controlled by the Kremlin since the 1920s, will trade freely.
1998: Fleeing fierce fighting and persecution by Serbs in Kosovo, 2,000 ethnic Albanian refugees reach Albania.
2000: A UN tribunal for Rwanda’s 1994 genocide sentences a Belgian-born radio journalist to 12 years in prison for broadcasts that encouraged the slaughter.
2001: Nepal’s crown prince Dipendra shoots and kills his parents, King Birendra and Queen Aiswarya, and six other royal family members before shooting himself.
2002: Queen Elizabeth II opens Buckingham Palace to 12,000 guests for a four-day national party in celebration of her 50 years on the throne.
2006: The US Army Corps of Engineers takes responsibility for the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, saying the levees failed because they were built in a disjointed fashion using outdated data.
2007: Lebanese tanks and armoured vehicles battle their way into the outer neighbourhoods of a Palestinian refugee camp in some of the heaviest fighting since violence broke out between the military and al-Qaeda-inspired militants nearly two weeks ago.
2008: Australia pulls its combat soldiers from Iraq, fulfilling an election promise that helped sweep Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to power in November.
2009: An Air France jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris runs into a towering wall of thunderstorms and disappears over the Atlantic Ocean.
Today’s Birthdays
Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804-1857); John Masefield, English poet (1878-1967); Brigham Young, US Mormon leader (1801-1877); Marilyn Monroe, US actress (1926-1962); Colleen McCullough, Australian author (1937-); Morgan Freeman, US actor (1937); Jason Donovan, US actor (1968-); Alanis Morissette, Canadian singer (1974-); Heidi Klum, model and TV host (1973-); Jonathan Pryce, Welsh actor (1947-).
