01010611 This Day In History, June 11

1184 BC: According to calculations by Eratosthenes, Troy was sacked and burned on this date during the Trojan War.

173: During the Marcomannic Wars, the Roman army in Moravia was encircled by the Quadi (a Germanic tribe), however during a severe thunderstorm the Romans under Marcus Aurelius broke the lines and defeated them.

631: Chinese Emperor Taizong of Tang dispatched ambassadors to the Xueyantuo with gold and silk for the release of enslaved Chinese prisoners captured during the transition from Sui to Tang from the northern frontier. The mission resulted in freeing 80,000 Chinese people.

1346: Charles IV of Luxembourg was elected Holy Roman Emperor in Germany.

1488: King James III of Scotland was murdered after his defeat at the Battle of Sauchieburn. He was succeeded by his son, James IV.

1509: King Henry VIII of England married the first of his six wives, Catherine of Aragon (the youngest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, the employers of Christopher Columbus). It was Henry's later divorce of Catherine that triggered the break from the Church of Rome and the creation of the Church of England.

1727: King George I, the first Hanoverian king of Britain, died and was succeeded by his son George II.

1788: Russian explorer Gerasim Izmailov arrived in Alaska. The area remained in Russian possession until the mid-twentieth century.

1770: English explorer Captain James Cook ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.

1847: John Franklin, British explorer, died in the Arctic after his ships became frozen in the ice. The details of his death were in a note found by a search party in 1859.

1903: King Alexander and Queen Draga of Belgrade were assassinated by members of the Serbian army.

1920: During the Republican National Convention in Chicago, party leaders gathered in a hotel to decide on their candidate for the presidential election. As first written by the Associated Press, it produced the political term "smoke-filled room."

1963: Quang Duc, 66, a Buddhist monk, committed suicide by burning himself with gasoline in a busy Saigon intersection to protest treatment of Buddhists by the U.S.-backed Diem regime. The picture was front-page news around the world the next day, and was followed by other monks in the weeks afterward.

1967: Israel and Syria accepted the terms of a U.N. cease fire.

1987: Margaret Thatcher won her third consecutive term as British Prime Minister.

1997: An official Italian commission approved a move to allow Vittorio Emanuele, son of Italy's last king, to return home after 50 years of exile.

2001: Timothy McVeigh, 32, was executed at a U.S. Federal prison at Terre Haute, Indiana. The U.S.-born terrorist confessed to the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19 1995 that killed 168 men, women and children. It was the most deadly act of terrorism in the U.S. prior to the 9-11 attacks on New York and Washington.