Today in History: Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison in South Africa

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on June 12:

1830 - Beginning of the French colonization of Algeria: 34,000 French soldiers land 27 kilometers west of Algiers, at Sidi Ferruch.

1917 – King Constantine of Greece stepped down in favour of his son, Prince Alexander.

1935 – Bolivia and Paraguay signed a truce ending the Chaco War, a three-year dispute over the Chaco area.

1957 – U.S. band leader and saxophonist Jimmy Dorsey died.

1964 - Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison in South Africa.

1991 – Boris Yeltsin defeated Communist rivals in the first direct election to the presidency of the Russian republic.

2003 – Gregory Peck, one of the last great stars from Hollywood’s golden era and a man who embodied on-screen heroism and dignity, died. He was 87 and best known for his appearances in the films “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “Moby Dick” and “Cape Fear”.

2005 – Kuwait appointed its first woman cabinet member, naming veteran women’s rights activist Massouma al-Mubarak as planning minister.

2006 – Canadian newspaper tycoon Ken Thomson, who helped transform his father’s print empire into one of the world’s biggest electronic publishers, Thomson Corporation, died aged 82.

2007 – The U.N. war crimes tribunal sentenced the former leader of rebel Serbs in Croatia, Milan Martic, to 35 years in jail for ordering atrocities committed in the early 1990s.

2008 – Long-time political rivals Taiwan and China, in their first formal talks in almost a decade, agreed to launch direct weekend passenger flights starting from July 4, the first in nearly 60 years.

2014 – Actress Angeline Jolie and Actor Brad Pitt join Britain’s Foreign Secretary at the world’s first summit to end sexual violence in conflict.

2017 – U.S. Student Otto Frederick Warmbier is released from detention in North Korea in a coma.

2018 - Singapore summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump - first time a North Korean leader and an incumbent US President have ever met.