Today in History

1556 – Shaanxi earthquake, the deadliest in recorded history, kills a reported 830,000 in China.

1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell, of Geneva Medical College in New York, becomes the first woman in the United States to receive a medical degree.

1855 – A magnitude 8.2 quake strikes Wellington, raising the harbour and providing flat land on which the CBD is subsequently built; nine deaths reported across lower North Island.

1859 – Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii begins an eruption that lasts 300 days. 1920 – Netherlands refuses to surrender Germany’s former Kaiser Wilhelm II to Allies for punishment as a World War I criminal. 1924 – Ramsay MacDonald assumes office as prime minister in Britain’s first Labour government.

1944 – Painter Edvard Munch dies.

1950 – Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, proclaims Jerusalem as the nation’s capital. 1951 – Twenty yachts leave Wellington bound for Lyttelton in a race to mark Canterbury’s centenary; in a southerly storm, two yachts and their 10 crew are lost.

1957 – Machines at the Whamo-O toy company in Connecticut roll out the first batch of its aerodynamic plastic discs – now known as Frisbees.

1962 – British intelligence officer Kim Philby, based in Beirut, defects to the Soviet Union. 1973 – US President Richard Nixon announces an agreement with North Vietnam to end the Vietnam War.

1978 – Sweden becomes the first country to announce a ban on aerosol sprays containing chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as their propelling agent.

1983 – Swedish tennis star Bjorn Borg announces his retirement, aged 26. 1985 – The first live TV broadcast is made of a British parliamentary debate, in the House of Lords.

1989 – Painter Salvador Dali dies; Civilian commandos and army troops backed by tanks battle at an infantry base on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1997 – Madeleine Albright, left, is sworn in as the first female US secretary of State. 2002 – A previously unknown militant group kidnaps Daniel Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, in Pakistan. Pearl, who had been working on a story about Islamist militant groups, is later killed. 2019 – US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disinvites President Donald Trump from making a State of the Union address in Congress, citing a government shutdown.

Birthdays

Edouard Manet, French artist (1832-83); Django Reinhardt, French musician (1910-53); Dorothy Winstone, NZ educator (1919-2014); Jeanne Moreau, French actor (1928-2017); Derek Walcott, Caribbean poet (1930-2017); Dame Margaret Bazley, NZ public servant (1938-); Adam Parore, NZ wicketkeeper (1971-); TJ Perenara, All Black (1992-).