Today in history
1520 – Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reaches Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic after passing through a South American strait now bearing his name.
1821 – Panama declares itself independent of Spain and joins the Republic of Colombia.
1885 – British forces occupy Mandalay in Burma.
1893 – New Zealand women vote in a general election for the first time.
1905 – Sinn Fein Party, part of the Irish Republican movement, is founded in Dublin, Ireland.
1916 – German planesmake their first raid on London, already subject to Zeppelin bombardments.
1919 – Lady Astor is elected first female member of Britain’s Parliament.
1937 – General Francisco Franco begins naval blockade of Spanish coast.
1943 – United States President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Ministerwinston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran, duringworldwar II.
1977 – Rhodesia announces 1200 have been killed in its recent raids against black nationalist guerrillas across the border in Mozambique.
1979 – Air NZ
Antarctica sightseeing flight crashes into Mt
Erebus, killing all
257 people on board.
1991 – Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi says he will not surrender two Libyans accused of the 1988 bombing of Pan Amflight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
2000 – Rescuers in Jakarta struggle to find survivors after devastating floods and landslides on Indonesia’s Sumatra island kill more than 100 people.
2001 – Enron Corp, the largest US energy-trading concern, collapses after its credit is downgraded to junkbond status and its smaller rival, Dynegy Inc, backs out of a US$9 billion deal to buy the troubled company.
2004 – Iran agrees not to test centrifuges as part of a total suspension of nuclear activities that could yield weapons-grade uranium, in what diplomats describe as an apparent about-face to avoid possible UN Security Council sanctions.
2008 – Five Kiwis and two German pilots die when an Air New Zealand Airbus crashes into the Mediterranean while on a test flight.
2011 – European leaders rush to stop a rampaging debt crisis that threatens to shatter their 12-year-old experiment in a common currency and devastate the world economy as a result.
Today’s birthdays: Jose Iturbi, Spanish pianist-conductor (1895-1980); Jon Stewart, US television host (1962-); Ed Harris, US actor (1950- ); Berry Gordy Jr, US Motown Records founder (1929- ).