2009-06-29 02:05:04 -

Today is Monday, July 6, the 187th day of 2009. There are 178 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date
1535 - Sir Thomas More executed in England on the orders of Henry VIII for advocating separation of church and state.
1699 - Pirate captain William Kidd is taken into custody in Boston, Massachusetts. He is later hanged in England.
1747 - France and Spain break combined blockade by British fleet and troops of Austria's Maria Theresa at Genoa, Italy.
1809 - Pope Pius VII, having excommunicated Napoleon Bonaparte, is taken prisoner by the French.
1908 - Young Turks under Niazi Bey stage revolt at Resina in Macedonia. Government troops sent to quell the riot desert.
1917 - Arab horsemen led by British officer T.E. Lawrence _ also known as Lawrence of Arabia _ capture the heavily garrisoned Turkish fort at Aqaba.
1919 - British dirigible lands at New York's Roosevelt Field, marking first crossing of Atlantic Ocean by an airship.
1923 - Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is formed.
1945 - Nicaragua becomes first nation formally to accept United Nations charter.
1964 - Nyasaland Protectorate, renamed Malawi, becomes independent within British Commonwealth.
1967 - Fighting breaks out between Nigerian troops and those of the newly proclaimed «Republic of Biafra.» The fighting later flares into a full-scale, two-year war.
1968 - Solomon Islands become independent from Britain.
1971 - Kamuzu Banda declares himself president for life in Malawi.
1972 - South Vietnamese capture Communist-occupied Quang Tri city.
1986 - Two Australians are hanged in Malaysia for drug trafficking, the first Westerners executed under Malaysia's strict drug laws.
1989 - Iranian leader Ali Khamenei urges Muslims to defy Saudi Arabian ban on political activity in holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
1990 - NATO allies pledge to reduce both nuclear and conventional forces in Europe in show of friendship to Soviet Union.
1991 - U.N. nuclear inspection team arrives in Iraq to test President Saddam Hussein's promise of full cooperation, while second team witnesses destruction of Iraq's last known long-range missiles.
1992 - French First Lady Danielle Mitterrand narrowly escapes death as car bomb explodes near her motorcade in Iraq.
1994 - The military government of Nigeria charges Moshood Abiola, the winner of an annulled presidential vote in 1993, with treason. He dies in prison in 1998.
1995 - Floods cut through some of southern China's poorest, most isolated areas, raising the death toll to near 600.
1996 - Taliban rockets smash into a crowded market in central Kabul, Afghanistan, killing eight people, including five children.
1997 - Opposition leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas wins the first mayoral election in Mexico City.

2000 - A heat wave baking southeastern Europe sends temperatures soaring to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit), killing 25 people, while firefighters battle hundreds of blazes sparked by the arid conditions in the region.
2001 - Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen pleads guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy to spy for Russia. Believed to be partly responsible for the deaths of at least three spies, he is later sentenced to life in prison without parole.
2002 - Two unidentified gunmen kill Afghan Vice President and Minister of Public Works Haji Abdul Qadir outside his office in Kabul. Qadir's slaying marks the second assassination of an Afghan cabinet minister in five months since the U.S.-backed post-Taliban government was formed.
2003 - Liberian President Charles Taylor accepts an offer of asylum in nearby Nigeria. U.S. President George W. Bush made Taylor's departure a condition of U.S. troops joining an international peacekeeping force in Liberia.
2004 - China confirms a new outbreak of bird flu just four months after claiming to have wiped it out, while Thailand announces a suspected case of the disease that experts fear could jump to humans.
2005 - New York Times reporter Judith Miller is jailed for refusing to divulge a confidential source to a grand jury investigating the Bush administration's leak of an undercover CIA operative's name.
2006 - Felipe Calderon wins the official count in Mexico's disputed presidential race.
2007 - Shots are fired as Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's plane takes off from a military base near Islamabad. Police raid nearby home and find two anti-aircraft guns and machine gun on roof.
2008 _ Firefighters in California attempt to protect thousands of homes from a huge wildfire. More than 300 blazes are still burning around the state.
Today's Birthdays: Frida Kahlo, Mexican artist (1907-1954); Janet Leigh, U.S. actress (1927-2004); Merv Griffin, entertainment mogul/former talk show host (1925-2007); Sylvester Stallone, U.S. actor (1946--); the Dalai Lama, exiled Tibetan leader (1935--); Nanci Griffith, U.S country singer (1953--); Geoffrey Rush, actor (1951--).
Thought For Today
Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form _ Andre Maurois, French author (1885-1967).