Today in History, 5/4
HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE
1355 - Charles IV is crowned in Rome as Holy Roman Emperor.
1614 - American Indian princess Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia.
1664 - Peace Treaty of Westminster ends first Anglo-Dutch War.
1818 - Chilean and Argentine troops defeat Spaniards in the Battle of Maipu, sealing Chilean independence.
1887 - British historian Lord Acton writes the famous maxim: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
1895 - Irish writer Oscar Wilde loses his criminal libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, who accused the writer of homosexual practices.
1923 - British archaeologist Lord Carnarvon, who discovered Tutankhamen's tomb in Egypt a few months earlier, dies of an unknown illness, beginning the legend of the "curse of the pharaoh".
1932 - Australian greatest racehorse, Phar Lap, which won 37 of its 51 starts, dies in California, days after winning the Agua Calienta race in Mexico.
1939 - All German children between ages of 10 and 13 are ordered to serve in Hitler Youth Organisation.
1951 - Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are sentenced to death in the US as atomic spies for the Soviet Union.
1955 - Sir Winston Churchill resigns as British prime minister.
1974 - The World Trade Center opens in New York City.
1976 - Death of reclusive US billionaire industrialist, aviator and filmmaker Howard Hughes, aged 72.
1989 - Vietnam announces it will withdraw all its troops from Cambodia by September 30 to encourage political settlement of the 10-year-old conflict.
1994 - Kurt Cobain, lead singer of US rock band Nirvana, takes his own life in Seattle, Washington.
1998 - The world's longest suspension bridge - 3911 metres - opens in Japan, linking Shikoku with the main island Honshu.
2002 - The coffin of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, is carried through London on a gun carriage.
2003 - US troops enter Baghdad. Iraq's information minister denies US reports that troops had reached the centre of the capital.
2006 - Apple rolls out a first-ever software patch to run Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system on its PCs.
2011 - The Defence Force culture is investigated after a cadet in Canberra broadcast a live video of himself having sex with a female cadet over Skype to others at the academy.
2014 - West Australians cast their Senate votes again after 1370 votes went missing in the 2013 federal election.
2015 - Stephanie Scott, a regional NSW teacher, vanishes a few days before she is due to marry, but after her burnt body is discovered a school cleaner is charged with her rape and murder.
2017 - The makers of Nurofen are ordered to pay legal costs after losing a High Court appeal against a $6 million fine for misleading consumers.
TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS
Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher (1588-1679); Elihu Yale, English-born philanthropist (1649-1721); Joseph Lister, English surgeon, discoverer of antiseptic (1827-1912); Bette Davis, US actor (1908-1989); Gregory Peck, US actor (1916-2003); Jane Asher, English actor (1946-); Agnetha Faltskog, member of Swedish pop group ABBA (1950-); Pharrell Williams, American rapper and producer (1973-); Quade Cooper, Australian rugby union player (1988-).
THOUGHT FOR TODAY
Birth, ancestry, and that which you yourself have not achieved can hardly be called your own. - Greek proverb.
