This Day in History — July 6
Today is the 187th day of 2021. There are 178 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2014: Israel arrests six Jewish suspects in the grisly slaying of a Palestinian teenager who was abducted and burned alive the previous week — a crime that set off a wave of violent protests in Arab sections of the country.
OTHER EVENTS
1415: Czech religious reformer Jan Hus, whose criticisms of the church anticipated the Reformation by more than a century, is burned at the stake for heresy.
1535: English humanist and statesman Thomas More is beheaded for refusing to accept King Henry VIII as head of the Church of England.
1699: Pirate Captain William Kidd is taken into custody in Boston, Massachusetts. He is later hanged in England.
1747: France and Spain break combined blockade by British fleet and troops of Austria’s Maria Theresa at Genoa, Italy.
1809: Pope Pius VII, having excommunicated Napoleon Bonaparte, is taken prisoner by the French.
1885: Louis Pasteur successfully gives an anti-rabies vaccine to 9-year-old Joseph Meister, saving his life.
1908: Young Turks under Niazi Bey stage revolt at Resina in Macedonia. Government troops sent to quell the riot desert.
1917: Arab horsemen led by British officer T E Lawrence — also known as Lawrence of Arabia — capture the heavily garrisoned Turkish fort at Aqaba.
1919: British dirigible lands at New York’s Roosevelt Field, marking first crossing of Atlantic Ocean by an airship.
1923: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is formed.
1942: Anne Frank and her family go into hiding in Amsterdam and live in a secret annex — an experience documented in Frank’s diary which became a classic of war literature — until their capture on August 4, 1944.
1964: Nyasaland Protectorate, renamed Malawi, becomes independent within British Commonwealth.
1967: Fighting breaks out between Nigerian troops and those of the newly proclaimed “Republic of Biafra”. The fighting later flares into a full-scale, two-year war.
1968: Solomon Islands become independent from Britain.
1971: Kamuzu Banda declares himself president for life in Malawi.
1972: South Vietnamese capture Communist-occupied Quang Tri city.
1986: Two Australians are hanged in Malaysia for drug trafficking, the first Westerners executed under Malaysia’s strict drug laws.
1990: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies pledge to reduce both nuclear and conventional forces in Europe in show of friendship to Soviet Union.
1994: Nigeria’s military Government charges Moshood Abiola, winner of an annulled presidential vote in 1993, with treason. He dies in prison in 1998.
1996: Taliban rockets smash into a crowded market in central Kabul, Afghanistan, killing eight people, including five children.
2000: A heat wave baking south-eastern Europe sends temperatures soaring to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit), killing 25 people.
2001: Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen pleads guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy to spy for Russia. Believed to be partly responsible for the deaths of at least three spies, he is later sentenced to life in prison without parole.
2003: Liberian President Charles Taylor accepts an offer of asylum in nearby Nigeria. US President George W Bush makes Taylor’s departure a condition of US troops joining an international peacekeeping force in Liberia.
2004: China confirms a new outbreak of bird flu just four months after claiming to have wiped it out, while Thailand announces a suspected case of the disease that experts fear could jump to humans.
2005: New York Times reporter Judith Miller is jailed for refusing to divulge a confidential source to a grand jury investigating the Bush Administration’s leak of an undercover Central Intelligence Agency operative’s name.
2006: Felipe Calderon wins the official count in Mexico’s disputed presidential race.
2009: Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev commit to a year-end deal to slash nuclear stockpiles by about a third, but the US leader fails to crack stubborn Kremlin objections to America’s missile defence plans — a major stumbling block to such an agreement.
2010: France’s justice minister goes before parliament to defend a hotly debated Bill that would ban burqa-style Islamic veils in public, arguing that hiding your face from your neighbours is a violation of French values.
2012: A top Syrian general’s defection is the first major crack in the upper echelons of President Bashar Assad’s regime, buoying a 100-nation conference meant to intensify pressure for his removal, as well as an Opposition desperate to bring him down but frustrated by diplomatic efforts.
2013: Islamic militants attack a boarding school before dawn, setting a dormitory ablaze as students sleep. At least 30 people are killed in the deadliest attack yet on schools in Nigeria’s embattled north-east.
2020: Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes agrees to the largest contract for an athlete in sports history, inking a 12-year deal that could end up being worth US$503 million.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Frida Kahlo, Mexican artist (1907-1954); Merv Griffin, entertainment mogul/former talk show host (1925-2007); Janet Leigh, US actress (1927-2004); the Dalai Lama, exiled Tibetan leader (1935- ); Gordon “Butch” Stewart, hotel mogul, business magnate and philanthropist (1941-2021); Sylvester Stallone, US actor (1946- ); George W Bush, 43rd president of the United States, businessman and politician (1946- ); Geoffrey Rush, actor (1951- ); Nanci Griffith, US country singer (1953-2021).
– AP and Jamaica Observer