1613: The original Globe Theatre in London burned down after a cannon was fired during a performance of a Shakespearean play and set fire to the straw roof. The theatre was destroyed, but rose again in June 1614, this time, with a tiled roof. That theatre closed in 1642 and a modern reconstruction of the Globe opened in 1997, approximately 250 yards (230 m) from the site of the original theatre.
1825: Samuel Ajayi Crowther is ordained the first African Bishop of the Anglican Church. Kidnapped along with his family at age 12 in Osogun, Oyo Empire (Nigeria) by Fulani slave raiders, he was sold to Portuguese traders, but rescued from a slave ship by a British Navy anti-slavery patrol. Resettled in Sierra Leone, he impressed Anglican missionaries with his scholastic brilliance and was sent to London to further his studies. He will be ordained a priest in 1843 after doing missionary work himself. While translating the Bible into Yoruba, he will earn the degree of Doctor of Divinity at the University of Oxford and will be invited to meet England’s Queen Victoria. He will read the Lord’s Prayer to her in Yoruba, a language she finds “melodious.”
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1927: Two U.S. aviators complete the first transpacific flight. Lester Maitland and Albert Hegenberger had taken off from Oakland Municipal Airport the previous day. Their “Bird of Paradise” aircraft touched down in Oahu, Hawaii 25 hours and 50 minutes later.
1956: In Belgian Congo, vocalist Vicky Longomba and musicians Jean Essous and Franco Luambo have formed the band OK Jazz, and are playing at clubs on weekdays and weddings on weekends. As they recruit members – there will be 50 in all as the groups “multiplies” so that some can go on tour while others remain in Leopoldville (Kinshasa) – they will grow into a legendary musical institution called TPOK Jazz from 1962) that will dominate the musical scene in the Democratic Republic of Congo from the 1960s to the 1980s.
1958: Brazil defeats host nation Sweden 5-2 to win its first World Cup. Brazil came into the tournament as a favorite, and did not disappoint, thrilling the world with their spectacular play, which was often referred to as the “beautiful game.” The star of the tournament was an undersized midfielder named Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known the world over as Pelé.
1972: In Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court rules by a vote of 5-4 that capital punishment, as it is currently employed on the state and federal level, is unconstitutional. The majority held that, in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, the death penalty qualified as “cruel and unusual punishment,” primarily because states employed execution in “arbitrary and capricious ways,” especially regarding race. It was the first time that the nation’s highest court had ruled against capital punishment.
1986: Richard Branson breaks the record for the fastest Atlantic crossing by boat. The British businessman took about three days to cross the ocean in his speedboat “Virgin Atlantic Challenger II”. He was denied the prestigious Blue Riband for the fastest crossing because he refueled on the way.
1990: Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are banned to protect the ozone layer
The London Amendment to the Montreal Protocol stipulated that CFCs be phased out by 2000 in developed countries and by 2010 in developing countries. CFCs are one of the substances most harmful to the ozone layer, escalating the greenhouse effect and global warming.
1992: As the Algerian Civil War begins, interim President Mohamed Boudaif, an independence fighter brought back from exile to head the government, is assassinated by his bodyguard. The killer will be tried in a secret military court, but never punished. Tens of thousands of supporters of the Islamic Salvation Front, which the military government bans, are held at a tented prison in the desert. Those who escape arrest will head to the hills to begin a ten-year guerilla war.
1995: The American space shuttle Atlantis docks with the Russian space station Mir to form the largest man-made satellite ever to orbit the Earth. This historic moment of cooperation between former rival space programs was also the 100th human space mission in American history. At the time, Daniel Goldin, chief of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), called it the beginning of “a new era of friendship and cooperation” between the U.S. and Russia.
2005: Nigeria and the Paris Club reached a historic agreement on an $18 billion write-off of Nigeria’s Paris Club debt.
2007: The iPhone revolutionized the smartphone industry and for a while made Apple one of the world’s most valuable companies.
2009: American hedge-fund investment manager Bernie Madoff received a sentence of up to 150 years in prison for operating the largest Ponzi scheme in history.
BIRTHS ON THIS DAY: June 29
Dennis Osadebay, (29 June 1911 – 26 December 1994)
Nigerian poet, journalist and politician, in Asaba, Delta State, British Nigeria. One of the first Nigerian poets to compose in English and used both his personal life and public events as inspiration. He was the first Premier of the Mid-Western Region (Edo State and Delta State) upon national Independence in 1960. He died at the age of 83.
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