Today in History

1594 – Gustavus II of Sweden born. By his death in 1632, Sweden was the strongest power in Europe.

1854 – Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Brigade is published in England.

1867 – The first train-load of passengers travels through the 2.6-kilometre tunnel linking the Canterbury plains and Lyttelton.

1990 – Lechwalesa wins a landslide victory to become the first directly elected president of Poland.

1992 – Prince Charles and Princess Diana announce they are separating; US Marines enter Mogadishu, Somalia, to restore order – they are withdrawn two years later, with Somalia still lacking a functioning government.

1997 – Ted Matthews, the last Australian survivor of the Gallipoli landings on April 25, 1915, dies.

2002 – United Airlines files for bankruptcy, the largest such case in the global airline industry.

2004 – Canada’s Supreme Court rules gay marriage is constitutional.

2007 – The world’s top two polluters, the United States and China, say they are not ready to commit to mandatory caps on global-warming gases at the UN climate conference on Bali.

2019 – A volcanic eruption on

Whakaari/white Island, left, kills 22 tourists and guides either immediately or subsequently from burns or respiratory damage. Most of the survivors suffer severe or critical injuries.

Birthdays

John Milton, English poet (1608-74); Clarence Birdseye, US frozen food inventor (1886-1956); Douglas Fairbanks Jr, US actor (1909-2000); Denis Glover, NZ poet (1912-80); Kirk Douglas, US actor (1916-2020); Bob Hawke, Australian politician (1929-2019); Buck Henry, US actorwriter (1930-2020); Dame Judi Dench, UK actor (1934-); John Malkovich, US actor (1953-); Donny Osmond, US singer (1957-); Felicity Huffman, US actor, (1962-); Simon Helberg, US actor (1980-).