This Day in History – June 21
Today is the 172nd day of 2011. There are 193 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight
2005: An 80-year-old former Ku Klux Klansman is convicted of manslaughter in the 1964-slayings of three civil rights workers that helped spur passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Other Events
1945: Japanese forces on Okinawa surrender to Americans in World War II.
1960: Britain, France, Netherlands and the US provide for a Caribbean organisation for economic cooperation.
1963: France withdraws Atlantic naval forces from NATO.
1965: Army officer Houari Boumedienne organises new government in Algeria after ousting and arresting President Ahmed Ben Bella.
1970: Indochina war erupts on dozen fronts in heaviest fighting since Vietnam conflict spread to Cambodia in April.
1971: International Court of Justice in the Hague rules that South Africa’s administration of territory of Southwest Africa is illegal.
1990: Massive earthquake strikes northern Iran, killing as many as 100,000.
1992: Ethiopians vote in their country’s first multiparty elections, but balloting is marred by opposition boycotts.
1996: In Managua, Nicaragua, dozens of election officials who had been kidnapped and held for two days by rearmed Contra rebels are released.
1997: The US, France and Russia agree to toughen sanctions against Iraq until UN inspectors confirm Baghdad is cooperating in the elimination of its weapons of mass destruction.
2000: Chile’s Senate approves a plan aimed at investigating what happened to 1,000 people who disappeared during the dictatorship of Gen Augusto Pinochet.
2002: Brazilians celebrate their team’s Soccer World Cup victory over England as the real, the nation’s currency, hits an all-time low against the US dollar and stocks plunge.
2003: Iran says it will increase its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, but suggests that the country will keep up controversial plans to enrich uranium.
2004: Assailants armed with grenade- and rocket-launchers seize the Interior Ministry headquarters in Ingushetia, a Russian region bordering warring Chechnya, killing the acting minister.
2006: The parties behind Ukraine’s Orange Revolution agree to form a coalition government, ending talks to preserve a pro-Western administration that has sought to shed Russia’s influence.
2007: International efforts to shut down North Korea’s nuclear programme take a surprise turn when the US sends a top American official to Pyongyang for direct talks, the first high-level visit by a US official there in more than 4 1/2 years.
2008: The Olympic torch winds through the streets of Tibet’s capital Lhasa, the scene of bloody riots in March that helped fuel demonstrations at some of the flame’s international stops. Tight security accompanies the flame on its three-hour journey.
2009: Mexico deploys 1,500 more troops to the northern border city of Ciudad Juarez where homicides related to the drug trade have surged.
2010: A Pakistan-born US citizen pleads guilty to trying to bomb New York’s Times Square and says he is “part of the answer to the US terrorising the Muslim nations and the Muslim people”.
Today’s Birthdays
Jean-Paul Sartre, French existentialist (1905-1980); Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan (1953-2007); Jane Russell, US actress (1921-2011); Francoise Quoirez (Francoise Sagan), French author (1933-2004); Meredith Baxter, US actress (1947-); Michael Gross, US actor (1947-); Juliette Lewis, US actress (1973-).