This day in history

11 July

Events

• 1276:  Ottobuono Fieschi is elected Pope Adrian V after the death of Pope Innocent V.
• 1302:  The French army, considered to be the finest fighting force of the time, is destroyed by the Flemish urban militia at Courtrai, Flanders. The Flemings repel the French cavalry, inflicting over a thousand casualties at a cost of only a few hundred casualties to their side.
• 1533:  Pope Clement VII excommunicates King Henry VIII of England for bigamy. Publication of the papal bull is deferred until October; on reading it, Henry appeals to the projected general council.
• 1588:  In the Edict of Union, King Henry III of France capitulates to the Guise Catholic League's demands; he summons the States-General (parliament) to Blois in October, and denies toleration to any Protestant, repudiating King Henry of Navarre, the Huguenot (French Protestant) heir to the throne, in favour of the aged Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, and appointing Henri, Duke of Guise, lieutenant general of the kingdom.
• 1635:  As a result of the diplomacy of France's chief minister Cardinal Richelieu, Parma, Savoy, and Mantua agree to join France in a league aimed at ousting Spain from its control of Milan.
• 1731:  A general war over the Italian duchies is averted by the Treaty of Vienna between Britain, the United Netherlands, Spain, and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI. Under the terms of the treaty, the maritime powers (Britain and the United Netherlands) guarantee the Pragmatic Sanction (which sets out the rights of the Emperor's daughter, Maria Theresa, to succeed him as ruler of all the Habsburg domains), Spain obtains the Italian duchies of Parma and Piacenza, and the Austrian East India Company is finally abolished. By a secret clause, Britain insists that Maria Theresa shall not marry a member of the Bourbon family.
• 1859:  The preliminary Peace of Villafranca temporarily ends the conflict between France and Austria. Austria is to cede the Italian states of Parma and Lombardy to France, for subsequent cession to Sardinia-Piedmont; Tuscany and Modena are to be restored to their pre-revolutionary rulers, and Venice is to remain Austrian. The treaty causes the Piedmontese prime minister Count Camillo Benso di Cavour to resign in disgust.
• 1902:  Robert Cecil, Lord Salisbury, retires as British prime minister, and is immediately succeeded by his nephew Arthur Balfour.
• 1975:  The government imposes general restrictions on pay rises in the public sector in Britain, with those earning more than 8,000 receiving no increase.
• 1979:  The Gilbert Islands, in the Pacific, gain their independence from Britain with the new name Kiribati.
• 1982:  Argentina recognizes a de facto cessation of hostilities with Britain in the South Atlantic, and the following day the British government declares an end to hostilities.
• 1986:  British newspapers are banned from printing extracts from Spycatcher, the memoirs of former MI5 officer Peter Wright.
• 1987:  The world population reaches 5 billion double that of 1950.
• 1995:  Serbs capture the United Nations (UN)-designated safe area of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina; Muslim women and children are moved to Tuzla while men are held back and massacred.
• 1998:  Researchers at the Fermi National Accelerator laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, announce the discovery of the tau neutrino, the least stable elementary particle of the lepton class.
• 2002:  The discovery in Chad of a 7 million-year-old fossilized skull belonging to a hominid is announced by researchers, potentially challenging traditional theories of human evolution.
• 2006:  In Mumbai in India, a series of terrorist bomb attacks on packed commuter trains and railway stations kill about 200 people and injure 700 more. Anti-Indian Kashmiri separatists based in Pakistan are widely suspected of involvement.

Births and Deaths

• Robert I the Bruce
  1274: Robert I the Bruce, King of Scotland 130629, who freed Scotland from English rule, winning a decisive victory at Bannockburn (1314), born (1329).
• George Gershwin
  1937: George Gershwin, US composer and songwriter for Broadway musicals, dies in Hollywood, California (38).
• Laurence Olivier
  1989: Laurence Olivier, English stage and film actor, director, and producer, dies near London, England (82).

Data provided by Helicon Publishing