Today in History, July 13

HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE

1558 - The Flemish army under Duke of Egmont in service of Spain's King Philip II, aided by an English fleet, defeats the French at Gavelines.

1793 - French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat is murdered in his bath by patriot Charlotte Corday.

1822 - The Greeks defeat Turks at Thermopylae in Greece.

1837 - King William approves the naming of Adelaide after his queen.

1854 - Abbas I, Viceroy of Egypt, is murdered, and succeeded by Mohammed Said.

1863 - Rioting against US Civil War military conscription breaks out in New York City, and about 1000 people are killed in three days of disorder.

1878 - Russo-Turkish War ends.

1911 - Britain and Japan renew their alliance for four years.

1912 - Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area at Yanco, NSW, is officially opened.

1913 - First Commonwealth of Australia banknotes are circulated.

1930 - The first-ever soccer World Cup competition begins in Montevideo, Uruguay.

1945 - Ben Chifley becomes Australian prime minister following the death of John Curtin.

1955 - Ruth Ellis becomes the last woman to be hanged in Britain, after she had murdered her lover.

1960 - John F Kennedy wins the Democratic presidential nomination at his party's convention in Los Angeles.

1985 - Live Aid concert watched by 1.5 billion around the world raises $100 million for African famine relief.

1990 - Mayors of Moscow and Leningrad show solidarity with populist Boris Yeltsin by resigning from the Communist Party on the last day of the Party Congress.

1997 - A 12-year-old Canberra girl is killed by a chunk of flying metal when the implosion to level the old Royal Canberra Hospital goes wrong.

2000 - Vietnam signs a landmark trade deal with the United States that clears the way for normal trade relations for the first time since the Vietnam War.

2001 - Fiji's coup leaders release their remaining 18 captives, ending a two-month-old parliamentary hostage crisis.

2003 - The International AIDS Society (IAS) holds its second international conference in Paris to examine scientific developments in the fight against AIDS.

2004 - The Red Cross says it suspects the United States is holding terror suspects secretly in locations across the world despite granting the organisation access to thousands of detainees in Iraq and elsewhere.

2005 - Bernard Ebbers, the folksy entrepreneur who built WorldCom Inc into a telecommunications giant, is sentenced to 25 years in prison for business fraud.

2006 - Peter Costello accuses Prime Minister John Howard of reneging on a deal to hand over power in his second term in office.

2007 - Argentina's Supreme Court throws out a 1989 presidential pardon absolving a former army general of alleged human rights abuses during Argentina's dictatorship.

2008 - Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Sydney for World Youth Day events.

2010 - Swiss authorities declare Oscar-winning film director Roman Polanski a free man.

2011 - Rupert Murdoch's dream of controlling a British broadcasting behemoth evaporates after he withdraws his bid for BSkyB.

2012 - Islamic insurgents based in northeast Nigeria claim responsibility for weekend raids on Christian villages in Plateau state that left at least 58 dead.

2012 - Australian cricketer Brett Lee retires from international matches.

2013 - Typhoon Soulik kills at least nine people and affects more than 160 million in East China and Taiwan.

2014 - Olympic swimming champion Ian Thorpe reveals he's gay in an exclusive interview with iconic journalist Sir Michael Parkinson; Germany wins the FIFA World Cup, beating Argentina 1-0 in extra time in Rio de Janeiro.

2015 - Royal commission into family violence begins hearings in Melbourne.

2017 - Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo dies from multiple organ failure after he wasn't allowed to leave the country for treatment of late-stage liver cancer.

Today's Birthdays:

John Dee, English alchemist and mathematician (1527-1608); Gustav Freytag, German novelist (1816-1895); Bob Crane, US actor (1928-1978); Wole Soyinka, Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate (1934-); Harrison Ford, US actor (1942-); Roger McGuinn, US guitarist-singer The Byrds (1942-); Erno Rubik, Hungarian inventor of Rubik's Cube (1944-); Tim Watson, AFL coach (1961-); Ladyhawke, New Zealand singer-songwriter (1979-); Elen Levon, Ukranian-Australian model, singer and actress (1994-).

Thought For Today:

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never - Soren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher (1813-1855).

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