Today in History

1483 – Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, is beheaded for his rebellion against King Richard III.

1785 – First lifeboat is patented by London coach builder Lionel Lukin.

1930 – Haile Selassie is crowned emperor of Ethiopia.

1947 – United States billionaireaviator Howard Hughes pilots his huge wooden airplane known as Spruce Goose on its only flight, which lasted about a minute over Long Beach Harbour, California. 1950 – Death of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw.

1962 – US President John F Kennedy, left, announces end to Cuban missile crisis, says Soviet Union has been dismantling bases in Cuba.

1976 – Jimmy Carter is elected 39th US president, defeating Gerald Ford. 2003 – The Rev Canon V Gene Robinson is consecrated as the first openly gay bishop of the US Episcopal Church, a move that threatens to tear apart the worldwide Anglican community.

2004 – A film-maker who is the great-grand nephew of Vincent van Gogh, Theo van Gogh, is slain in a daylight attack after making a movie criticising the treatment of Muslim women. Police arrest a Dutch-Moroccan man after wounding him in a shootout.

2005 – Chinese scientists say they have gathered evidence of a giant object in the centre of our galaxy, a super-massive black hole as wide as the radius of the Earth’s orbit.

2010 – Britain and France strike a historic defence deal aimed at preserving military muscle in an age of austerity, pledging to deploy troops under a single command, share aircraft carriers and collaborate on nuclear programmes.

Birthdays

Daniel Boone, US pioneer (1734-1820); Marie Antoinette, wife of France’s King Louis XVI (1755-1793); Burt Lancaster, US actor (1913-1994); Douglas Lilburn, NZ composer (1915-2001); Ken Rosewall, Australian tennis champion (1934-); kd lang, Canadian singer (1961-); David Schwimmer, US actor (1966-).