Today in History

41– Claudius succeeds his nephew Caligula as Roman emperor after the latter’s assassination.

1848 – James Marshall finds a gold nugget in the US state of California, touching off the Gold Rush.

1865 – British troops invade South Taranaki as part of attempts to defeat a Ma¯ori independence movement.

1924 – Petrograd is renamed Leningrad. It reverts to its earlier name, St Petersburg, in 1991.

1935 – The first beer in cans, Krueger’s Cream Ale, goes on sale in Richmond, Virginia.

1939 – An 8.3-magnitude quake centred in south central Chile kills 50,000 and injures 60,000.

1946 – UN General Assembly votes to create UN Atomic Energy Commission.

1965 – Death of Sir Winston Churchill, aged 90.

1967 – South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Cao Ky encounters antiwar demonstration on a visit to NZ.

1969 – General Francisco Franco, left, declares martial law in Spain.

1972 – Japanese soldier Shoichi Yokoi is found in Guam jungle, having spent 28 years unaware that World War II had ended.

1980 – NZ orders Soviet ambassador Vsevolod Sofinsky to leave after he was recorded allegedly delivering $10,000 to pro-Soviet Socialist Unity Party at a motel.

1984 – Apple unveils revolutionary Macintosh personal computer.

1990 – 14th Commonwealth Games open in Auckland.

2011 – British singer Adele releases her album 21, which sells more than 30 million copies worldwide. 2018 – Larry Nassar, a former doctor for the US gymnastics team, is jailed for sexual assaults on at least 250 young women and girls.

Birthdays

Hadrian, Roman emperor (76AD138); Frederick the Great, Prussian king (1712-86); William Malone, NZ army officer at Gallipoli (1859-1915); Edith Wharton, US novelist (1862-1937); Desmond Morris, UK anthropologist (1928-); Neil Diamond, US singer (1941-); Sharon Tate, US actor (1943-69); Wyatt Crockett, All Black (1983-).