1525 - Spanish King Charles I issues the "Royal decree of the Fray Garcia de Loaysa, appointed governor of the Moluccas, to allow Captain Sebastian Caboto and the people of his armada to trade in the Island; Spain, which has "discovered" [read: first learned about] the nearby and future colony the Philippine archipelago (Islas de San Lazaro), has tried several times to gain control of Moluccas, the so-called “Spice Islands” (future Indonesia] beginning with the Magellan expedition of 1521 in the bid to thwart Portugal which had forged alliance with the sultan of Ternate .
1962 - The first United States space rocket, Ranger IV, lands on the far side of the moon, three years after the Soviets beat the Americans to the coveted space record; Ranger IV fails to send back lunar/space pictures owing to technical issues but in July 1964, NASA will ultimately succeed when Ranger VII is able to send back over 4,000 images before crashing into the Mare Cognitum area of the Moon.
1986 - The Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the world's worst nuclear power plant accident, kills 32 people and inflicts radiations burns in dozen others in the Soviet Union; the accident at the Chernobyl station, situated at the Pripyat settlement north of Kiev, Ukraine, was triggered by a poorly designed experiment by the plant engineers who wanted to find out if inertial power can run the reactor's turbine to power the emergency water pumps.
2005 - Syria announces that all of its military forces have left Lebanon in line with the demands of the United Nations following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; the Syrian soldiers shouted support for their president before marching off to a Lebanese army band during a parade marking the end of 29 years of deployment in the country.
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