Today in history

1793 - Queen Marie Antoinette is beheaded during the French Revolution.

1813 - Napoleon’s forces are defeated by Prussia, Austria and Russia in the Battle of Leipzig.

1846 - American dentist William Morton demonstrates the effectiveness of ether as an anaesthetic by administering it to a patient undergoing jaw surgery.

1916 - Margaret Sanger opens the first birth-control clinic in the United States, in New York City.

1936 - New Zealand aviator Jean Batten completes an 11-day, 45-minute solo flight from England to Auckland, becoming the first person to make the journey.

1946 - Ten Nazi war criminals condemned during the Nuremberg trials are hung.

1962 - The Cuban missile crisis begins when US President John F Kennedy is informed by his aides that reconnaissance photographs reveal the presence of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.

1964 - China detonates its first atomic bomb.

1970 - Anwar Sadat is elected president of Egypt, succeeding the late Gamel Abdel Nasser.

1978 - The College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church choose Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Poland to be the new pope; he takes the name John Paul II. He is the first non-italian pope in 456 years.

1992 - Indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala is named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

1998 - Former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is arrested in London on a Spanish warrant requesting his extradition on murder charges.

2003 - Pope John Paul II celebrates the 25th anniversary of his election as pope, making him the fourth-longest serving pope in Roman Catholic Church history.

2007 - Libya wins a seat on the powerful United Nations Security Council as a non-permanent two-year term member.

2008 - The longtime private secretary of the late Pope John Paul II reveals in a film that the pope was lightly wounded in a 1982 knife attack by a priest in Portugal.

2013 - ACT Party MP and Cabinet minister John Banks resigns his ministerial roles after being ordered to stand trial over irregularities in his election returns from his failed Auckland mayoralty bid.

Today’s Birthdays:

Oscar Wilde, British writer (1854-1900); David Ben-gurion, first prime minister of Israel (1886-1973); Eugene O’neill, US playwright and Nobel laureate (1888-1953); Michael Collins, Irish leader (1890-1922); Angela Lansbury, actress (1925-); Tim Robbins, actor and director (1958-); John Mayer, pop-rock singer (1977-).