Today in History, July 29

HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE:

1030 - King Olaf, patron saint of Norway, is killed in battle.

1565 - Mary Queen of Scots marries Henry, Lord Darnley, in Edinburgh.

1696 - Russian forces of Peter the Great takes Azov from the Turks.

1833 - Death of William Wilberforce, who campaigned successfully for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.

1841 - Group of Maori chiefs sell about 1214 hectares around Waitemata Harbour, present site of Auckland, to New Zealand government.

1856 - Robert Schumann, German composer and critic dies aged 46.

1890 - Vincent van Gogh, Dutch post-impressionist painter, dies two days after shooting himself.

1914 - Transcontinental telephone service begins in the US with first phone conversation between New York and San Francisco.

1930 - Airship R100 sets out on its first passenger-carrying flight from England to Canada.

1937 - Japanese seize Tianjin in China; 18-year-old Crown Prince Farouk is crowned as king of Egypt.

1941 - Vichy France and Japan sign agreement for "joint protection" of Indochina. Allows France to continue administering colonies, but Japan sends in troops.

1948 - First Olympic Games after World War II open in London at Wembley Stadium.

1957 - International Atomic Energy Agency is established.

1958 - US President Dwight Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which creates NASA.

1973 - Voters in Greece endorse decisions by their leaders to abolish Greek monarchy and install George Papadopoulos as president.

1974 - US singer Mama Cass Elliot dies aged 32.

1981 - Prince Charles marries Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul's Cathedral in London.

1982 - Sir Ninian Stephen takes office as Australia's Governor-General; Value of the Australian dollar against the US dollar falls below parity for the first time.

1983 - Death of David Niven, British film actor who won an Oscar for his role in Separate Tables in 1958.

1986 - South Africa's President PW Botha rejects British foreign secretary's plea for unconditional release of Nelson Mandela.

1994 - Former Italian prime minister Bettino Craxi is sentenced to eight and a half years in jail after being found guilty of fraud.

1998 - US President Bill Clinton agrees to give videotaped testimony to a grand jury probing White House sex and cover-up allegations.

2003 - Sierra Leonean rebel leader Foday Sankoh, who had been in UN custody since 2000 and was awaiting trial on charges of mass murder and other crimes, dies at a hospital in Freetown, after a stroke.

2004 - British-born scientist Francis Crick, who helped discover the double helix shape of the DNA, dies aged 88.

2007 - Cadel Evans becomes the first Australian to finish on the Tour de France podium, coming second to Spain's Alberto Contador; Australian woman Tamara Broome, 31, flies home after being jailed in the US over an internet romance with a 17-year-old North Carolina boy.

2009 - Microsoft finally persuades Yahoo! to surrender control of the internet's second-most popular search engine and join it in a daunting battle - taking on the overwhelming dominance of Google in the online advertising market.

2010 - Forest fires burn vast areas of southern Russia as Moscow suffers a record heat wave with temperatures of 38C-plus and a shroud of fog.

2015 - A piece of wing from missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370 washes up on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.

2016 - Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he won't be supporting former PM Kevin Rudd's bid to be named chief of the United Nations, saying he's "not well suited" to the role.

2017 - The United States sends two supersonic bombers over the Korean Peninsula in a show of force against North Korea following the country's latest intercontinental ballistic missile test.

Today's Birthdays:

Alexis de Tocqueville, French political scientist (1805-1859); Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator (1883-1945); Dag Hammarskjold, Swedish UN Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1905-1961); Clara Bow, US silent-era film star (1905-1965); Peter Jennings, US television anchor (1938-2005); Doug Ashdown, Australian singer-writer (1942-); Wendy Hughes, Australian actress (1950-2014); Corinne Dibnah, Australian golfer (1962-); Martina McBride, US country singer (1966-); Stephen Dorff, US actor (1973-); Fernando Alonso, Spanish F1 world champion (1981-).

Thought For Today:

The fellow who says he'll meet you halfway usually thinks he's standing on the dividing line - O A Battista, Canadian-born author-scientist.

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