Today in history: May 12

A collection of events that shaped history on this day.

1536

Sir Francis Weston, Mark Smeaton and other alleged paramours of England's Queen Anne Boleyn go on trial for treason.

Today in History: Birthdays

Last Updated: May 12, 2010

Gustav I Vasa,

king and founder of Swedish Vasa dynasty (1496?-1560)

Florence Nightingale

English nursing pioneer (1820-1910)

Jules Massenet

French composer (1842-1912)

Gabriel Faure

French composer (1845-1924)

Katharine Hepburn

US actress (1907-2003)

Joseph Beuys

German artist (1921-1986)

Burt Bacharach

US singer/songwriter (1928--)

Gabriel Byrne

US actor (1950--)

1888

Britain establishes protectorate over North Borneo and Brunei.

1915

Forces of South Africa's Louis Botha occupy Windhoek, capital of German Southwest Africa.

1926

Josef Pilsudski stages coup in Poland; Roald Amundsen reaches the North Pole.

1932

The body of the kidnapped son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh is found in a wooded area of Hopewell, New Jersey.

1937

Britain's King George VI is crowned at Westminster Abbey.

1938

Japanese warships capture Chinese island of Amoy.

1943

Battle of North Africa ends in World War II with German surrender of Cap Bon in Tunisia.

1949

Soviets lift the blockade of West Berlin after eleven months.

1962

South African General Law Amendment Bill imposes death penalty for sabotage.

1965

West Germany establishes diplomatic relations with Israel, and Arab states break off relations with Bonn government.

1978

The U.S. Commerce Department announces hurricanes will no longer be named exclusively after women.

1980

The first nonstop crossing of North America in a hot air balloon is made.

1982

In Fatima, Portugal, security guards overpower a Spanish priest armed with a bayonet as he tries to reach Pope John Paul II.

1985

Amy Eilberg becomes the first female rabbi in the conservative Jewish movement.

1992

The last European Community observers flee Bosnia; four suspects are arrested in the beating of trucker Reginald Denny at the start of the Los Angeles riots.

1993

Police arrest Franco Nobili, chairman of IRI, Italy's huge state industrial conglomerate and its largest employer, on corruption charges. He is later acquitted.

1994

Palestinian police arrive in the West Bank and prepare to take over Jericho, the seat of Palestinian self-rule.

1995

The U.N. instructs its peacekeepers in Bosnia to shoot to kill to protect themselves a day after a sniper shoots a French soldier in the head in Sarajevo.

1996

A rusty freighter teeming with thousands of sick and hungry Liberian refugees is finally allowed to limp into a Ghanaian port after a harrowing week at sea.

1997

The leaders of India and Pakistan meet for the first time in four years in Male, The Maldives, and agree on measures to ease the tension between their long-feuding countries.

1998

War crimes investigators discover mass graves near Srebrenica, thought to contain the remains of some of the 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men massacred by Serbs in 1995.

1999

With 327 sorties, NATO carries out its busiest day of attacks yet against Yugoslavia, and President Slobodan Milosevic for the first time acknowledges military casualties.

2000

Ignoring international pleas to end their two-year border conflict, Ethiopia and Eritrea return to open war with fighting reported on three fronts.

2001

Estonia emerges as the surprise winner - for the first time - of Eurovision, Europe's popular annual song contest.

2002

Former US President Jimmy Carter travels to Cuba for talks with President Fidel Castro and the nation's leading dissidents. He is the first former or sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge in 1928.

2003

Two suicide bomb attacks kill at least 75 people and injure hundreds of others in the rebellious southern republic of Chechnya.

2004

The International Obesity Task Force, in the first global assessment of child obesity says, one of every 10 school children in the world is overweight, and about 45 million have an increased risk of developing diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses before the age of 20.

2005

Russia's security chief accuses U.S. and other foreign intelligence services of using non-governmental organizations that promote democracy to spy on Russia and bring about political upheaval in former Soviet republics.

2006

Up to 200 people are killed in Nigeria when gasoline gushing from a ruptured pipeline explodes as villagers scavenge for fuel, setting off an inferno.

2007

Riots and gunbattles break out in Karachi, Pakistan, after opposition protests against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's decision to suspend the country's chief justice. At least 41 people are killed in the weekend clashes.

2008

A 7.9-magnitude earthquake hits Sichuan province in central China, killing more than 28,000 people and burying more than 10,600 people.

2009

Retired auto worker John Demjanjuk listens silently as a German judge reads a 21-page warrant accusing him of acting as an accessory to the murder of 29,000 people at a Nazi death camp.

2010

Britain ushers in its first coalition government since World War II as a pair of rivals-turned-partners pledge to set aside their deep policy differences and tackle the country's disastrous budget deficit.