Today in History: Thirty-nine fans crushed to death in Heysel stadium disaster in Belgium

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 29:

1453 - Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire falls to the Turks under Mehmed II; ends the Byzantine Empire.

1660 - On his 30th birthday Charles II returns to London from exile in the Netherlands to claim the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth comes to an end.

1931 – Michele Schirru executed for plotting to assassinate Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

1953 – New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest, the first men to scale the world’s highest mountain. The feat was not reported to a waiting world until June 1.

1979 – Mary Pickford, silent movie star, died.

1979 – Bishop Abel Muzorewa was sworn in as first black prime minister of Zimbabwe Rhodesia, as the country was briefly known prior to independence from Britain.

1985 – Thirty-nine soccer fans, mostly Italian, were crushed to death in rioting involving Liverpool and Juventus supporters at the European Cup Final in Brussels’ Heysel stadium.

1994 – Erich Honecker, who ruled communist East Germany for 18 years and oversaw the building of the Berlin Wall, died in exile in Chile. He was 81.

1999 – The U.S. space shuttle Discovery became the first spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station.

2001 – A U.S. court convicted four followers of Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden over a plot to murder Americans abroad, including 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

2002 – Britain appointed its first black cabinet minister, Paul Boateng, to the number two position in the Treasury.

2004 – U.S. National World War Two Memorial formally dedicated.

2009 – Still maintaining his innocence, music producer Phil Spector was sentenced to at least 19 years in prison for the 2003 murder of a Hollywood actress. He was convicted in April of second-degree murder after a second trial.

(Reuters)