Today in history

Bernard Montgomery, British field marshal (1887-1976); Rock Hudson, US actor (1925-1985); Peter Snell, NZ athlete (1938-); Martin Scorsese, US film director (1942-); Danny Devito, US actor (1944-). 1534 – British Parliament passes the Act of Supremacy, which declares King Henry VIII head of the Church of England. 1558 – Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England after the death of Mary I. 1604 – Sir Walter Raleigh is tried for treason and is imprisoned in England. 1734 – Publisher of the New York Weekly Journal, John Peter Zenger, is arrested for libel. He is later acquitted, a decision regarded as a landmark for freedom of expression. 1800 – US Congress holds its first session in Washington in the partially completed Capitol building. 1869 – Suez Canal opens in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and Red Seas. 1925 – The New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition opens in Dunedin, going on to attract more than 3.2 million visitors. 1937 – Lord Halifax visits Adolf Hitler, attempting a peaceful settlement of the majority German Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. This marks the beginning of Britain’s policy of appeasement. 1971 – Vemij Thanon Kittikachorn seizes power in Thailand, abolishes Parliament, dismisses cabinet and suspends nation’s constitution. 1973 – US President Richard Nixon tells an Associated Press managing editors meeting in Orlando, Florida, that ‘‘people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook’’. 1999 – Large areas of Southland and Central Otago, including the resort towns of Queenstown and Wanaka, are affected by record-breaking floods. 1999 – The United Nations urges Rwanda to co-operate with an international tribunal, after the release of genocide suspect Jean-bosco Barayagwiza, a top Hutu official, on procedural grounds. 2001 – Voters in the predominantly ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo in the Serb republic of Yugoslavia cast ballots in the province’s first legislative elections since international peacekeepers drove Serb troops out in 1999. 2005 – Rebels burning tyres and sporadic explosions block thousands of Sri Lankans from voting in a tight election for a new president to shape peace efforts in the country bloodied by civil war and devastated by the 2004 tsunami. 2008 – Courts in military-ruled Myanmar sentence at least seven democracy activists to prison, continuing a crackdown that saw about 70 people jailed the previous week.