The Mercury, Australia
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
Advertiser, Australia
July 15 2004
On this day
1099 – Three years after the First Crusade set out, the Christian
army storms Jerusalem and puts its Muslim inhabitants to the sword.
1601 – Austria’s Archduke Albert, with Spanish force, begins a
three-year siege of Ostend, the last Dutch stronghold in Belgium,
ultimately taking it.
1685 – Duke of Monmouth is beheaded in England for his part in
rebellion. It takes the inexperienced executioner eight blows of the
axe to sever his head.
1789 – France’s King Louis XVI is awakened and told that his
authority has collapsed with the fall of the Bastille.
1795 – La Marseillaise is officially adopted as the French national
anthem.
1815 – Napoleon surrenders to Captain Maitland of the Bellerophon at
Rochefort.
1822 – Turkish invasion of Greece begins, and Turks overrun peninsula
north of Gulf of Corinth.
1857 – British women and children, taken by Indians at Cawnpore in
India, are murdered.
1869 – Margarine is patented in France by Hippolyte Mege Mouries.
1883 – Death of Charles Stratton, renowned US midget showman better
known as General Tom Thumb.
1893 – Matabeles stage uprising against rule of British South Africa
Company.
1904 – Death of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, author of Three
Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.
1909 – Mohammed Ali, Shah of Persia, is deposed in favour of Sultan
Ahmad Shah, age 12.
1912 – The Commonwealth Bank of Australia opens its doors for the
first time as a savings bank.
1916 – Boeing Co, originally known as Pacific Aero Products, is
founded in Seattle, Washington, by William Boeing.
1918 – The Second Battle of the Marne begins during World War I.
1929 – Death of Hugo von Hofmannstahl, Austrian author and librettist
best known for his collaboration with composer Richard Strauss.
1945 – Italy declares war on Japan, its former Axis partner in World
War II.
1948 – UN Security Council orders truce in Palestine.
1953 – John Christie, infamous murderer of at least six women at Ten
Rillington Place, London, is hanged.
1958 – United States dispatches troops to Lebanon at request of
President Chamoun; South Africa resumes full membership in United
Nations.
1964 – Anastas Mikoyan succeeds Leonid Brezhnev as President of the
Soviet Union; The Australian newspaper begins publication in
Canberra.
1965 – US Mariner IV spacecraft sends to earth first close-up
photographs of planet Mars; US Congress passes legislation requiring
health warning labels on cigarette packets.
1974 – Officers in Cyprus favouring unification with Greece oust
Archbishop Makarios from presidency and the coup leads to Turkish
military intervention.
1975 – America’s Apollo and Soviet Union’s Soyuz spacecraft blast
into orbit for rendezvous in space.
1977 – Anti-drug campaigner Donald McKay disappears and is presumed
murdered in the southern NSW town Griffith.
1983 – Six people died and 48 are injured when Armenian terrorists
bomb a Turkish Airlines desk at Orly airport, Paris.
1985 – A gaunt-looking Rock Hudson appears at a news conference with
actress Doris Day to promote her cable television program. It’s later
revealed Hudson was suffering from AIDS.
1987 – Taiwan ends 38 years of martial law to pave the way for
multiparty elections.
1988 – Afghan rebels blast capital city Kabul with rockets, killing
20 people and wounding 24 others.
1990 – Tens of thousands of people march to Kremlin walls to protest
Communist Party control of Soviet government, army and KGB; Death of
British film actress Margaret Lockwood.
1991 – Western troops complete their pullout from Kurdish refugee
havens in Northern Iraq.
1993 – In a major purge of the federal Yugoslav army command, about a
third of its generals face replacement by officers who support
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
1994 – Former West Australian premier Brian Burke begins a two-year
jail term after being convicted of fraud; Tens of thousands of Hutus
continue to flee the Tutsi-led rebel advance in Rwanda, flooding
across the border into Zaire in one of the greatest human flights in
history; European Union leaders pick Luxembourg Prime Minister
Jacques Santer to head the European Commission, replacing Jacques
Delors.
1995 – The Sri Lanka military ends its biggest offensive in eight
years against Tamil Tiger rebels, fighting that left at least 300
people dead.
1996 – A cargo plane carrying members of a Dutch military band
crashes at Eindhoven air force base, killing 32 people.
1997 – Fashion designer Gianni Versace is shot dead outside his Miami
Beach mansion by serial killer Andrew Cunanan.
1998 – Nigeria’s military government orders the immediate release of
at least 400 people imprisoned under the late military ruler General
Sani Abacha.
1999 – China reinforces a longstanding threat to invade if Taiwan
declares independence and it also announces it has developed the
technology to make neutron bombs.
2000 – In a rare display of force, UN troops launch a rescue mission
that frees all 222 peacekeepers and 11 military observers trapped by
rebels inside a UN base in eastern Sierra Leone.
2000 – Zimbabwe launches the resettlement of black peasants on farms
seized from whites in all its eight provinces.
2001 – Bangladeshi Prime minister Sheikh Hasina leaves office after
five years, longer than any other Bangladeshi leader.
2002 – A Pakistan judge convicts four defendants in the kidnapping
and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl.
2003 – The White House Office projects a $US455 billion ($632.52
billion) federal budget deficit for the 2003 fiscal year, the largest
in dollar terms.