This Day in History – June 11
Today is the 162nd day of 2013. There are 203 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2009: WHO says swine flu is now formally a pandemic, a declaration that speeds vaccine production and spurs government spending to combat the first global flu epidemic in 41 years.
OTHER EVENTS
1891: Portugal assigns Barotseland, now in Zambia, to Britain, and Nyasaland becomes a British protectorate.
1898: Emperor Kuang-Hsu of China begins 100 days of reform in effort to modernise China, but conservative forces soon squelch the attempt.
1903: The unpopular King Alexander of Serbia and his wife are murdered in a palace coup. Peter Karageorgevic is later elected to replace him.
1940: Princess Juliana of the Netherlands arrives in Canada as an exile during World War II.
1963: Greek Premier Constantine Caramanlis resigns in protest of King Paul’s state visit to Britain.
1967: The UN brokers a cease-fire between Israel and the defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, ending the Six-Day War with Israel occupying the Sinai, West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
1969: Soviet and Chinese troops clash on Sinkiang border.
1970: Palestinian guerrillas and King Hussein’s army sign truce in Jordan after week of heavy clashes.
1993: North Korea pulls Asia back from the brink of a possible nuclear arms race by reversing its decision to withdraw from a treaty preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
1998: Between 1,500 and 2,000 foreigners, mostly Portuguese, are evacuated by ship from the capital of Guinea-Bissau, where civil war rages.
1999: Cheering residents of Prokuplje, Kosovo, throw flowers onto several dozen Yugoslav army vehicles heading out of the province as NATO troops mass across the border in Macedonia.
2001: In northern Colombia, thousands turn out to protest a US-backed programme to eradicate cocoa crops by plane. They want the government to manually eradicate the plant used to make cocaine, instead of spraying the countryside.
2002: The loya jirga elects Hamid Karzai, the head of Afghanistan’s interim government since December 2001, as leader of the transitional government to serve until elections are held in 2004.
2003: The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam reject a peace offer by Sri Lanka for rebel participation in a provisional administrative body for the Tamil-majority northern and eastern portions of the island nation. They demand to be put in charge of an interim administration with legal and political powers that would give them authority in the region.
2004: Congo government troops put down a coup attempt, overcoming the second crisis in the same month for the country’s patched-together, post-war government.
2005: The world’s richest countries agree to write off more than $40 billion of debt owed by the poorest nations. The debt relief package backed by finance ministers from the Group of Eight industrialised nations is part of a British-led effort to help lift Africa out of poverty.
2008: Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper makes a public apology in Parliament for a decades-long government policy requiring Canadian Indians to attend state-funded schools aimed at stripping them of their culture.TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Ben Jonson, English poet and playwright (1572-1637); John Constable, British artist (1776-1837); Julia Margaret Cameron, British photographer (1815-1879); Millicent G Fawcett, British suffragette (1847-1929); Richard Strauss, German composer (1864-1949); Kawabata Yasunari, Japanese novelist and Nobel laureate (1899-1972);
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, French underwater explorer (1910-1997); Gene Wilder, US actor (1933-); Bruce Robison, US country singer/songwriter (1966-); Shia LaBeouf, US actor (1986-); Hugh Laurie, British actor (1959-).
— AP