This Day in History

In 1789, there was a mutiny on HMS Bounty as the crew of the British ship set Capt. William Bligh and 18 sailors adrift in a launch in the South Pacific.

In 1918, Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the archduke's wife, Sophie, died in prison of tuberculosis.

In 1937, former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was born in the village of al-Oja near the desert town of Tikrit (he was executed in December 2006).

In 1947, a six-man expedition sailed from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day journey to Polynesia.

In 1952, war with Japan officially ended as a treaty that had been signed by the United States and 47 other nations took effect.

In 1967, heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the Army, the same day Gen. William C. Westmoreland told Congress the U.S. "would prevail in Vietnam."

In 1987, Contra rebels in Nicaragua killed Benjamin Ernest Linder, an American engineer working on a hydroelectric project for the Sandinista government.