01010606 This Day In History, June 6

1513: Swiss papal forces defeated the French at the Battle of Novara in Italy during the War of the Holy League.

1523: Gustav Vasa was elected King of Sweden, ending the Kalmar Union.

1586: English forces under Francis Drake raided Spanish forces at St. Augustine (Florida was then a possession of Spain).

1620: At beginning of The Thirty Years War, 27 of the most eminent men of the protestant Czech lands were executed and dismembered for "heresy" by Catholics under Ferdinand.

1654: Queen Christina abdicated the Swedish throne to become a member of the Church of Rome.

1644: Manchu forces of the Qing Dynasty, led by the Shunzhi Emperor, captured Beijing during the collapse of the Ming Dynasty. The Manchus thereafter ruled China until 1912, when the Republic of China is established.

1660: The Peace of Copenhagen was signed, ending the war between Sweden and Denmark.

1683: The first public museum, The Ashmolean, was opened at Oxford, England.

1752: A fire destroyed about one-third of Moscow.

1762: During the Battle of Havana, British forces began a siege of Havana, Cuba.

1808: Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, was crowned King of Spain.

1813: The Battle of Stoney Creek during the War of 1812 (1812-1814). A British and Canadian force of 700 under John Vincent repelled an invading U.S. force three times its size.

1882: A cyclone in the Arabian Sea produced huge waves into Bombay harbour, killing 100,000 people.

1942: The U.S. carrier Yorktown was sunk by a Japanese submarine after being hit by bombs in the Battle of Midway.

1944: Operation Overlord: 24,000 U.S., British and Canadian paratroopers, and the amphibious landing of 61,000 British ("Gold" and "Sword" beaches), 22,000 Canadian ("Juno" beach) and 73,000 U.S. ("Omaha" and "Utah" beaches) troops on the coast of Normandy, France, during the first 24 hours. It was the largest sea-borne invasion in history and has become popularly known as "D-Day" (Date Day).

1967: Day 2 of the "6 Day War". The Israeli air force by then had inflicted heavy losses on the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian air forces: 416 aircraft (393 while still on the ground) were destroyed by Israel, with a loss of only 26 Israeli aircraft, all to anti-aircraft fire (see also A History Of Jerusalem: War And Peace).

1968: Senator Robert Kennedy died at age 42, the day after being shot by a Palestinian-immigrant assassin in Los Angeles.

1971: The Soviet Union launched Soyuz 11. The flight ended in disaster when the capsule depressurized during preparations for re-entry, killing the three-man crew (Vladislav Volkov, Georgi Dobrovolski, and Viktor Patsayev). To date, it was the only accident that resulted in human deaths in space, rather than at high atmosphere as happened with the two U.S. space shuttle accidents.

1971: During the Vietnam War, the Battle of Long Khanh between Australian and North Vietnamese forces began.

1980: For the second time in a week, U.S. nuclear forces went on red alert following a computer error warning of a Soviet attack.

1982: Israel began the "Operation Peace For Galilee" in which 80,000 Israeli troops and extensive air power invaded Lebanon in response to shelling of northern Israel by Palestinian forces in Lebanon. The Israelis inflicted heavy losses on the enemy ground forces and a devastating blow to the Syrian air force - between June 9 and 10 alone, 96 Syrian MiG-25 fighters that entered Lebanese air space were shot down, without a single Israeli plane lost. The Israelis captured vast quantities of PLO equipment - 1,320 armored combat vehicles, 144 artillery pieces and rocket launchers, 196 anti-aircraft guns, 1,342 anti-tank weapons, 33,000 small arms, and several thousand tons of ammunition. After initial swift successes however, the Israelis met fierce resistance; by the end of the conflict, casualties were estimated at 6,000 PLO fighters and noncombatants, and 800 Israeli dead and wounded, including Major General Yekutiel Adam, the highest-ranking Israeli officer ever to fall in battle.

1985: Police in Brazil exhumed a body they believed was that of Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi "angel of death". Mengele was blamed for the deaths of 400,000 people and for sadistic "medical experiments" conducted at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. The body was exhumed after West German officials found a letter Mengele sent from Brazil. A team of West German, Brazilian, and U.S. scientists concluded that the body was Mengele. Police believe that he drowned while swimming on February 7 1979 and was buried under a false name.

2002: An estimated 10-meter diameter asteroid entered the atmosphere and exploded over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Libya. The force of the explosion was estimated to have been about the same as the atomic bomb that the U.S. used to incinerate Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.