Today in history
1824 – The presidential election is turned over to the US House of Representatives when a deadlock develops among John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H Crawford and Henry Clay. Adams is declared the winner.
1913 – The first US drive-in automobile service station opens in Pittsburgh.
1925 – Through the Locarno Treaties Belgium, Britain, Italy, Germany and France agree to a mutual peace in Europe.
1933 – Pilot Teddy Harvie and his passenger, Miss Trevor Hunter, make the first flight from North Cape to Invercargill, in a time of 16 hours, 10 minutes.
1934 – Sergei Kirov, a trusted aide of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin but also a possible rival, is assassinated, prompting Stalin to purge the Communist Party.
1955 – Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, defies the law by refusing to give up her seat to a white man aboard a Montgomery, Alabama city bus. She is arrested, sparking a yearlong boycott of buses by blacks.
1965 – An airlift of refugees from Cuba to the United States begins. Thousands of Cubans are allowed to leave their homeland.
1981 – A chartered Yugoslav DC-9 jetliner slams into a Corsican mountain as it approaches Ajaccio Airport, killing all 174 people aboard.
1988 – Benazir Bhutto is named Pakistan’s prime minister, becoming the first woman to lead a modern-day Muslim nation.
1991 – Ukrainians vote 9-to-1 in favour of independence from Soviet Union in a referendum.
1992 – A tear gas grenade blows off a farmer’s hand as tens of thousands of European farmers protest in Paris against a Useuropean accord to cut farm subsidies.
1995 – Prosecutors in South Africa formally charge former Defence Minister General Magnus Malan and 19 others with the murders of 13 people in 1987.
1997 – Historians say banks in Switzerland received three times more gold than previously believed from the Nazis during World War II.
2003 – Tens of thousands crowd into central Wellington to celebrate the world premier of the Peter Jackson film The Return of the King, reported as the biggest show-biz spectacle New Zealand has seen.
2008 – One of the highest tides in its history brings Venice, Italy, to a virtual halt, flooding its historic St Mark’s Square and rekindling a debate over a plan to build moveable flood barriers.
Today’s birthdays: Walter Alston US baseball manager (1911-1984); Heather Begg, NZ opera singer (1932-); Woody Allen, US director (1935– ); Bette Midler, US singer/ actress (1945– ).