Today in History

1773 – King of Tonga presents Captain James Cook, right, with a giant turtle, which dies in London in 1966. 1883 – New York’s Metropolitan Opera House opens with a production of Gounod’s opera Faust. 1909 – French aviator Elise de Laroche, better known by the title Baronne de Laroche, makes her first solo flight, a distance of 300 metres. In March 1910, she became the first qualified female pilot. 1910 – British murderer Dr Hawley Crippen is sentenced to death at the Old Bailey in London. 1962 – South African black leader Nelson Mandela pleads not guilty at the start of his treason trial. 1964 – French writer Jean- Paul Sartre rejects the Nobel Prize for Literature, saying it would reduce the impact of his writing. 1992 – A UN-sponsored commission says it has discovered signs of a mass grave near the Croatian city of Vukovar.

1995 – British novelist and poet Sir Kingsley Amis dies. 2003 – USA Today publishes a leaked memorandum dated October 16 from US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld to four high-level Defence Department associates in which he questioned the progress in the war on terrorism. 2010 – WikiLeaks website is poised to release what the US Defence Department fears is the largest cache of secret US documents in history.

2014 – Researchers say breathing polluted air in the first two years of life is linked to autism.

Birthdays

Franz Liszt, Hungarian-born composer (1811-1886); Sarah Bernhardt, French actress (1844-1923); Ivan Bunin, Russian writer, Nobel laureate (1870-1953); Catherine Deneuve, French actress (1943-); Jeff Goldblum, US actor (1952-); Shaggy, Jamaican reggae rapper (1968-); Zac Hanson, pop musician (1985-).