This Day in History – June 27
Today is the 178th day of 2013. There are 187 days left in the year.
TOAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1973: Florizel Glasspole is sworn in as Governor General of Jamaica. He is the third person and the second Jamaican to hold the title since the country declared Independence in 1962.
OTHER EVENTS
1844: Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, is shot dead by a mob in Carthage, Illinois.
1932: A constitution is proclaimed in Siam — now Thailand.
1940: Soviet Union invades Romania during World War II after King Carol refuses to cede Bessarabia and Bukovina.
1943: US bombers attack German-occupied Athens in World War II.
1946: Foreign Ministers of Britain, US, Soviet Union and France transfer Dodecanese Islands from Italy to Greece, and areas of northern Italy to France.
1950: US President Harry S Truman orders US Air Force and Navy into Korean conflict.
1972: Northern Ireland enjoys first day of peace in almost three years as Irish Republican Army begins ceasefire.
1977: French Somaliland becomes Africa’s 49th independent state, the Republic of Djibouti.
1990: Contra commanders surrender their weapons to Nicaraguan President Violetta Barrios de Chamorro in ceremony marking the end of the country’s civil war.
1992: Crown Prince Alexander, the heir to the Yugoslav throne, receives an emotional welcome upon his return, hopeful of re-establishing the monarchy.
1994: Freezing temperatures cover large areas of Brazil’s coffee-growing regions causing losses of nearly a quarter of next year’s crop.
1995: The Atlantis space shuttle blasts into orbit with a US-Russian crew of seven on the first shuttle-docking mission with Russia’s space station Mir.
1997: Tajikistan’s president and a rebel leader sign a peace pact ending five years of bitter civil war in the Central Asian nation, but fighting lingers.
1998: An earthquake rattles Adana in southern Turkey, killing 144 people and injuring about 1,000.
2000: The UN releases a report that says AIDS has killed 19 million people worldwide. The report predicts the disease will wipe out half the teenagers in some African nations, devastating economies and societies.
2001: The World Court, formally known as the International Court of Justice, rules 14-1, that the US had violated an international treaty by not halting the execution by the state of Arizona of two German brothers in 1999.
2004: Ex-prime minister Yvon Neptune is detained on suspicion of orchestrating killings during the February rebellion that led to the ouster of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
2007: British Prime Minister Tony Blair resigns after a decade in power, in which he transformed the Labour Party and helped end Northern Ireland’s troubles but angered many of his supporters by committing Britain to a bloody, unpopular war in Iraq.
2008: North Korea destroys the most visible symbol of its nuclear weapons programme, blasting the cooling tower at its main atomic reactor into a cloud of smoke as a sign of its commitment to stop making plutonium for atomic bombs.
2009: NATO and Russia agree to resume military ties in their first high-level meeting since Russia’s war with Georgia disrupted their relations 10 months ago.
2011: Thousands of jubilant Libyans dance and cheer in the streets of the rebel stronghold of Benghazi after the International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Moammar Gadhafi, accusing him of crimes against humanity for killing civilians who rose up against his rule.
2012: Italian Premier Mario Montio warns that the European Union faces potential disaster if its leaders do not cooperate and find a way to keep interest down on Italy’s national debt.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Alexis Bouvard, French astronomer (1767-1843); Charles Stewart Parnell, Irish Nationalist leader (1846-1891); Helen Keller, US blind and deaf scholar (1880-1968); Eduard Spranger, German educator/philosopher (1882-1963); Emma Goldman, Russian labor leader/anarchist (1869-1940); Frank O’Hara, US poet/critic (1926-1966); Bob Keeshan, US actor “Captain Kangaroo” (1927-2004); Tobey Maguire, US actor (1975-); JJ Abrams, US director/writer/producer (1966-).
— AP/Observer