Today in History

1701 – The Collegiate School of Connecticut – later Yale University – is chartered in New Haven, United States.

1936 – The Hoover Dam, harnessing the power of the Colorado River, begins sending electricity to Los Angeles.

1940 – St Paul’s Cathedral is bombed during the Battle of Britain.

1963 – A landslide in Italy falls into a reservoir and water overtops a dam, leading to the deaths of more than 1900 people.

1967 – New Zealand abandons the ‘‘six o’clock swill’’ – the compulsory 6pm closing of all bars, blamed for widespread closing-hour binge drinking – after a referendum calls for it to be scrapped. In Bolivia, socialist revolutionary and guerilla leader Che Guevara, left, aged 39, is executed.

1970 – The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia.

1974 – German businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving 1200 Jews from the Holocaust, dies aged 66.

1975 – Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov, the physicist who helped build the Soviet Union’s first hydrogen bomb, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his struggle against ‘‘the abuse of power and violations of human dignity in all its forms’’.

2010 – Chile’s trapped miners cheer as a drill punches into their underground chamber, opening a way out after they had been stuck for 65 days.

Birthdays

Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Us-canadian publisher and activist (1823-1893); Ron Trotter, New Zealand businessman (1927-2010); John Lennon, English singer-songwriter (1940-1980); Sharon Osbourne, English TV host (1952-); Scott Bakula, US actor (1954-); Shona Laing, NZ musician (1955-); Paul Radisich, NZ racing driver (1962-); Guillermo del Toro, Mexican filmmaker (1964-); David Cameron, former British prime minister (1966-); Steve Mcqueen, English film director (1969-); Annika Sorenstam, Swedish golfer (1970-); Greg Henderson, NZ cyclist (1976-); Chris O’dowd, Irish actor (1979-); Russell Packer, NZ rugby league player (1989-).