Today in history

1792 - Highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier becomes the first person under French law to be executed by guillotine.

1859 - Austria suppresses revolt in Krakow, Poland; Ground is broken for the landmark Suez Canal.

1898 - United States declares war on Spain.

1915 - Allied soldiers invade the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to take the Ottoman Turkish Empire out of World War I.

1916 - Communities across New Zealand gather to mark the first Anzac Day. On a solemn day, race meetings were even deferred to another date.

1920 - Supreme Allied Command assigns mandates of Mesopotamia and Palestine to Britain, and of Syria and Lebanon to France; Poland launches offensive against Soviets in the Ukraine.

1942 - In the first US counterattack of the war, 16 bombers make a daring daylight raid on Tokyo; A coal mine disaster in Benxi, Japanese-occupied China, kills 1549 workers – the world’s worst mining disaster at the time.

1945 - US and Soviet troops meet at the Elbe River in central Europe, a meeting that dramatises the collapse of Nazi Germany; delegates of 45 nations meet in San Francisco to organise the United Nations.

1963 - A six-strong New Zealand civilian surgical team arrives in Qui Nhon, South Vietnam, as part of the Colombo Plan assistance programme, marking New Zealand’s first involvement in the Vietnam War.

1991 - Soviet Union’s Communist Party plenum decides to keep Mikhail Gorbachev as leader despite hours of harsh criticism that led him to offer to resign.

1993 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin wins vote of confidence in referendum, but fails to force new parliamentary elections.

1997 - In what is called a monumental defeat for the US tobacco industry, a federal judge rules for the first time that tobacco can be regulated as a drug.

2000 - The United Nations releases a new assessment of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, saying that the worst health consequences for millions of people may be yet to come.

2002 - The US House of Representatives approves a measure to split the Immigration and Naturalisation Service into two separate enforcement and service branches, and making immigration reform a top priority following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Today’s birthdays:

Oliver Cromwell, English statesman (1599-1658); Ella Fitzgerald, US singer (1918-1996); Al Pacino, US actor (1940-); Bjorn Ulvaeus, Swedish musician-composer, ABBA member (1945-); Talia Shire, US actress (1946-); Renee Zellweger, US actress (1969-).