Today in History, June 23

HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE

1501 - Pedro Cabral returns to Portugal after a voyage during which he claimed Brazil for Portugal.

1611 - English navigator Henry Hudson, famous for attempting to find a route from Europe to Asia via the Arctic Ocean, is set adrift in Hudson Bay by mutineers on his ship Discovery. He was never seen again.

1722 - England's Queen Anne orders French people in Nova Scotia to take an oath of allegiance to her government within one year or leave.

1848 - Belgian Adolphe Sax is awarded a patent for the saxophone.

1868 - American inventor Christopher Latham Sholes receives a patent for an invention he calls a "Type-Writer".

1886 - Bonaparte and Orleans families are banished from France.

1931 - Australian aviator Harold Gatty and American Wiley Post take off from New York on the first flight around the world in a single-engine plane.

1945 - Defeated Japanese commander Lieutenant General Ushijima commits suicide at Okinawa, site of the bloodiest battle of the Pacific theatre in World War II.

1952 - US Air Force bombs hydro-electric plants in North Korea.

1955 - Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp, the first animated feature filmed in CinemaScope, opens in US theatres.

1972 - President Nixon and White House chief of staff HR Haldeman discuss a plan to use the CIA to obstruct the FBI's Watergate investigation - the revelation of a tape recording of this conversation sparked Nixon's resignation in 1974.

1980 - Australia's first test tube baby, Candice Reed, is born in Melbourne.

1985 - All 329 people aboard Air-India Boeing 747 die as it crashes into the Atlantic Ocean on a flight from Toronto to Bombay.

1992 - Mafia godfather John Gotti is sentenced to life in prison, triggering a near riot as his supporters try to storm the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse.

1993 - US woman Lorena Bobbitt cuts off her husband John's penis. She is later acquitted of malicious wounding by reason of insanity, he is acquitted of marital sexual assault and, with penis reattached, begins a career as a porn star.

1994 - After decades as an international outcast, South Africa reclaims its seat in the United Nations General Assembly.

1997 - US civil rights activist Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X, dies in New York of burns suffered in a fire set by her 12-year-old grandson.

2000 - In a challenge to Boeing Co, Airbus Industrie announces the launch of the world's largest passenger jet, the A380 double-decker jumbo.

2005 - Former Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen is sentenced to 60 years in prison for orchestrating the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers who were registering black voters in Mississippi.

2006 - The World Health Organisation details the first evidence that a person is suspected of catching the bird flu virus from a human.

2008 - A Pakistani court rules that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is not eligible to run in upcoming parliamentary elections because he had been convicted of a crime.

2010 - President Barack Obama sacks his loose-lipped Afghanistan commander Stanley McChrystal and chooses Gen David Petraeus to replace him.

2012 - Black Caviar wins The Diamond Jubilee Stakes at the famous UK meet Royal Ascot, taking her record to 22 wins from 22 starts.

2013 - Rogue US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked information on spying by the US, arrives in Moscow from Hong Kong where he is given temporary asylum.

2014 - Award-winning Australian journalist Peter Greste and two of his Al Jazeera colleagues are sentenced to seven years in an Egyptian prison on terrorism-related charges after a trial dismissed by rights groups as a sham.

2015 - Australian IS recruit Mohamed Elomar is reportedly killed in Iraq.

2016 - Three Australians and one New Zealander are among a group of mine workers kidnapped by gunmen during a deadly attack in Nigeria.

2017 - A suicide bomber's plans to attack the Grand Mosque in the Muslim Holy City of Mecca are foiled by Saudi security forces, who cornered the would-be attacker in an apartment where he blew himself up.

Today's Birthdays:

Josephine, French empress and wife of Napoleon Bonaparte (1763-1814); Edward, Duke of Windsor (1894-1972); Alfred Charles Kinsey, US sexologist (1894-1956); June Carter Cash, US country singer (1929-2003); Diana Trask, Australian singer (1940-); Adam Faith, British singer-actor (1940-2003); Bryan Brown, Australian actor (1947-); Clarence Thomas, US Supreme Court Justice (1948-); Gordon Bray, Australian Commentator (1949-); Frances McDormand, US actress (1957-); Zinedine Zidane, French footballer (1972-); Selma Blair, American actress (1972-); Joel Edgerton, Australian actor (1974-); KT Tunstall, Scottish singer-songwriter and musician (1975-); Jason Mraz, American singer (1977-); Hayden Foxe, Australian footballer (1977-); Chet Faker, Australian musician (1988-).

Thought For Today:

Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith - Franz Kafka, author and poet (1883-1924).

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