Today in history
1577 - Sir Francis Drake of England sets out with five ships on a nearly three-year journey that would take him around the world.
1642 - Dutch Mariner Abel Tasman discovers New Zealand.
1862 - Confederate forces deal Union troops a major defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia during the American Civil War.
1918 - United States President Woodrow Wilson arrives in France, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office.
1937 - Japanese troops take Nanking in China and proceed to massacre an estimated 300,000 Chinese civilians.
1942 - The Battle of the River Plate begins in the seas off South America, with the HMS Achilles becoming the first New Zealand warship to take part in a naval battle.
1944 - During World War II, the US cruiser Nashville is badly damaged in a Japanese kamikaze suicide attack that claims 138 lives.
1950 - South Africa refuses to place Southwest Africa under United Nations trusteeship.
1957 - An estimated 1062 people are killed by an earthquake in western Iran. Farsinaj, a village at the epicentre of the temblor, is destroyed.
1972 - US Apollo 17 astronauts, on last US moon mission, unveil plaque dedicated to peace on lunar surface.
1989 - South African President FW de Klerk meets for the first time with imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, at de Klerk’s office in Cape Town.
2001 - New Zealand’s air force Skyhawks stage their final flights, marking the end of the country’s airstrike capacity.
2003 - US forces capture former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in a small underground hideout near the Iraqi city of Tikrit. Hussein was armed, but no shots were fired as he was taken into custody.
2007 - European Union leaders sign the Lisbon Treaty, a slimmeddown version of the aborted EU constitution. The 50-article charter creates the post of EU president and overhauls voting rules.
2009 - An attacker hurls a statuette at Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, striking the leader in the face at the end of a rally and leaving the stunned 73-year-old media mogul with a broken nose and bloodied mouth.
2010 - Ukraine plans to open up the sealed zone around the Chernobyl reactor to visitors who wish to learn more about the nuclear disaster that occurred nearly a quarter of a century ago.
Today’s Birthdays:
Gren Alabaster, NZ cricketer (1933-); Ruth Richardson, former NZ minister of finance (1950-); Wayne ‘‘Buck’’ Shelford, NZ rugby player (1957-); Taylor Swift, American singer (1989-).