On this date in history:

In 1509, Henry VIII became king of England after his father, Henry VII, died.

In 1836, with the battle cry Remember the Alamo! Texas forces under Sam Houston defeated the army of Mexican Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at San Jacinto, Texas, opening the path to Texas independence.

In 1918, Manfred von Richthofen, German World War I flying ace known as The Red Baron, was killed by Allied fire over Vaux-sur-Somme, France.

In 1954, U.S. Air Force planes began flying French troops to Indochina to reinforce Dien Bien Phu. (The city later fell to communist Viet Minh forces.)

In 1960, Brasilia was inaugurated as Brazil's capital, moving the seat of government from Rio de Janeiro.

In 1967, a Greek army coup in Athens sent King Constantine into exile in Italy.

In 1975, Nguyen Van Thieu resigned as president of South Vietnam after denouncing the United States as untrustworthy. (His replacement, Tran Van Huong, prepared for peace talks with North Vietnam as communist forces advanced on Saigon.)

In 1987, the bombing of a bus terminal in Colombo, Sri Lanka, killed 127 people and wounded 288.

In 1992, gas explosions ripped through the historic center of Guadalajara, Mexico, killing more than 200 people and injuring hundreds of others.

In 2005, the U.S. Senate approved the nomination of John Negroponte to be the nation's first national intelligence director.

In 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a link had been found between contaminated drug thinners from China and 81 deaths in the United States.

In 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, increasing the number of AmeriCorps community service volunteers from 75,000 to 275,000 by 2017.

In 2011, John Ensign, R-Nev., resigned his U.S. Senate seat amid a budding ethics scandal. Ensign admitted an affair with his former campaign treasurer earlier and had been under Republican pressure to step down.

In 2012, author, evangelical leader and Prison Fellowship founder Charles Chuck Colson, who had been involved in the Watergate scandal and served time in prison, died in Virginia three weeks after brain surgery. He was 80.

In 2013, a Chinese government report said Americans are being squeezed out of the political process by wealthy special interests. The report was in response to a U.S. critique on human rights in China and other countries.

In 2014, in the first Boston Marathon since the April 15, 2013, bombings that killed three people and injured 260, Meb Keflezighi became the first American man to win race in more than three decades. Kenya's Rita Jeptoo won the women's division for the second straight year.

Copyright 2015 by United Press International