2009-06-21 02:13:02 -

Today is Sunday, June 28, the 179th day of 2009. There are 186 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date
1389 - Serb army is defeated by the Turks at Kosovo Polje. Remainder of Serbia is conquered by Turks, who rule for almost 500 years.
1797 - France occupies Ionian Islands of Greece.
1812 - Napoleon Bonaparte's army crosses Vilna River as Russian forces retreat.
1881 - Immigration Act of New Zealand restricts Japanese immigration.
1895 - Raids are launched from Bulgaria into Macedonia following founding of an external Macedonian revolutionary organization at Sofia.
1914 - Austria's Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife are assassinated at Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, Serb revolutionary, igniting World War I.
1919 - Germany and the Allies sign the Treaty of Versailles, formally ending World War I and providing for the creation of the League of Nations
1942 - British 8th Army in North Africa retreats from Germans to El Alamein; German forces launch counterattack against Soviets in Kharkov region.
1948 - Yugoslavia is expelled from Communist group Cominform for hostility to Soviet Union.
1950 - North Korean soldiers capture Seoul, as South Koreans retreat south of Han River.
1956 - Labor riots are put down in Poznan, Poland, with many casualties.
1976 - The Seychelles, an Indian Ocean island group, become independent after 102 years under British rule.
1986 - West European leaders, meeting in the Netherlands, delay indefinitely imposing economic sanctions against South Africa.
1988 - U.S. military attache to Greece is killed by powerful car bomb that blows his armor-plated car off road.
1989 - In Slobodan Milosevic's shining moment, one million Serbs gather in Kosovo, Yugoslavia, to mark the 600th anniversary of their defeat by the Turks and cheer their nationalist leader.
1991 - Yugoslav army declares a cease-fire after nearly two days of fighting to keep Slovenia from seceding.
1993 - Thousands of illegal Albanian immigrants in Greece are rounded up and sent home in bus convoys as police crack down following Albania's expulsion of a Greek Orthodox priest.
1994 - Three masked gunmen seize a bus and take about 40 passengers hostage near the southern Russian city of Mineralnye Vody.
1996 - Turkey's president Suleyman Demirel approves the country's first Islamic-led government in 73 years.
1997 - Cuban and Argentine forensic experts uncover the remains of legendary guerrilla leader Ernesto «Che» Guevara and five of his companions near the Bolivian town of Vallegrande.
1998 - Slavko Dokmanovic, Serb former mayor of Vukovar, Croatia, hangs himself in his cell while the International War Crimes Tribunal considers a verdict on his role in a massacre of 200 people.
1999 - Computer hackers deface the U.S. Army's main web site after having hacked into the White House, FBI and U.S. Senate Web sites.
2000 - Seven months after floating adrift in the Florida straits, 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez returns to his native Cuba, bringing to a close a fierce custody battle.

2001 - Yugoslavia hands over former President Slobodan Milosevic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal.
2004 - The United States hands over sovereignty to the Iraqis two days ahead of schedule and seven months before elections are set to take place.
2005 - The European Union and five nations pick France over Japan as the site for an experimental nuclear fusion reactor, opening the way for development of a potential source of clean, inexhaustible energy.
2006 - U.N. member states lift a $950 million (euro756 million) spending cap on the United Nations budget, averting a financial crisis but dealing a blow to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's reform agenda.
2007 - Israeli President Moshe Katsav agrees to resign in a plea bargain that drops rape allegations and the threat of jail time in return for pleading guilty to lesser charges.
2008 - Zimbabweans deface ballots and boycott the discredited re-election of President Robert Mugabe after an onslaught of state-sponsored violence pushes his main opposition from the race.
Today's Birthdays
England's King Henry VIII (1491-1547); Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish painter (1577-1640); Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher-author (1712-1778); Luigi Pirandello, Italian dramatist and Nobel laureate (1867-1936); Richard Rodgers, U.S. composer (1902-1979); Mel Brooks, U.S. actor/director (1926--); Pat Morita, U.S. actor (1932-2005); Kathy Bates, actress (1948--); John Cusack, actor (1966--).
Thought For Today
I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war _ Georges Clemenceau, French statesman (1841-1929).