Today in History, 5/2
Highlights in history on this date:
1782 - Spanish forces capture Minorca Island, off Spain, from British.
1862 - The United States issues its first "greenback" currency notes, nicknamed for their colour.
1917 - Mexico becomes a federated republic of 28 states.
1922 - Reader's Digest begins publication in New York.
1941 - Death of Australian poet Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson.
1971 - US Apollo 14 astronauts land on Moon.
1985 - Spain reopens the border with Gibraltar, ending a 16-year siege imposed by General Franco.
1989 - Algeria's president proposes new national constitution, dropping references to socialism and opening door to multi-party system.
1989 - Rupert Murdoch launches Sky Television in Britain.
1992 - UN declines deployment of 10,000-man UN peacekeeping force in Yugoslavia.
1994 - About 68 people are killed when a single mortar shell explodes in a Sarajevo marketplace.
1997 - Three Swiss banking giants announce they will contribute $US71 million to open a humanitarian fund for Holocaust victims.
1998 - More than 600,000 plantation workers in Sri Lanka go on strike for higher wages.
1999 - Neville Bonner, the first Aboriginal to sit in Federal parliament, dies aged 76.
2001 - Four disciples of Osama bin Laden go on trial in New York over the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa.
2002 - A federal grand jury in the US, indicts John Walker Lindh on 10 charges, alleging he conspired with the Taliban to kill Americans.
2003 - The Senate passes a symbolic vote of no confidence in Prime Minister John Howard for his handling of Iraq.
2005 - NATO helicopter gunships find the shattered wreckage of an Afghan airliner on a mountain east of Kabul.
2007 - Lisa Nowak, a US astronaut accused of trying to kidnap and murder a woman she considered a rival, is arrested and released on bail.
2008 - Australian Lila Salter, 17, shot by a stalker, dies in India when her family switches off her life support. Her killer, Saurav Singh, the nephew of a former state minister, shot himself in the February 2 attack.
2010 - Ex-Australian Army soldier Scott Anthony Walker is jailed for nine months in the US for his role in a $US900,000 Afghanistan security contract kickback scandal.
2013 - Investigators say Hezbollah was behind a bus attack that killed five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria in 2012, describing a sophisticated bombing carried out by a terrorist cell that included Canadian and Australian citizens.
2015 - Australian journalist Peter Greste arrives in Australia after spending 400 days in jail in Egypt.
2016 - The Syrian Army and its allies capture the town of Ataman, near the city of Daraa.
2017 - The Australian national cricket team relinquishes the Chappell-Hadlee trophy after losing to New Zealand in Hamilton.
2018 - "Snow day" blankets Moscow with a record 62cm of the white stuff, leaving one dead and hundreds of flights cancelled.
Today's Birthdays:
Peter Lalor, leader of Eureka Stockade uprising (1827-1889); John Boyd Dunlop, Scottish inventor of the pneumatic rubber tyre (1840-1921); Duff McKagan, US rock musician of Guns N' Roses fame (1964-); Bobby Brown, US singer (1969-); Crown Princess Mary of Denmark (1972-); John Aloisi, Australian soccer player (1976-).
Thought For Today:
Many excellent words are ruined by too definite a knowledge of their meaning. - Aline Kilmer, American poet (1888-1941).
