Today in History

1783 – William Pitt the Younger, right, becomes the youngest British prime minister, at 24.

1793 – Napoleon Bonaparte takes Toulon, southern France, from Britain and Spain in his first major military victory.

1843 – Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is published in England; the first A&P show in New Zealand is held in Auckland, which was then mostly farmland.

1879 – All New Zealand men aged

21 or over are given the right to vote, regardless of whether they own or rent property.

1907 – A coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania, kills

239 workers.

1941 – New Zealand’s worst naval loss of life, as Royal Navy cruiser HMS Neptune strikes mines off Libya. Of the 764 who died, 150 were New Zealanders.

1966 – United Nations General Assembly endorses a draft treaty banning the use of weapons of mass destruction in space.

1972 – Apollo 17 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the last manned mission to the Moon.

1984 – Britain and China sign a joint declaration spelling out the terms for Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.

1998 – The US House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, charging him with lying under oath and obstructing justice.

2006 – A Libyan court convicts five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor and condemns them to death for infecting 400 children with HIV.

Birthdays

Sir Ralph Richardson, UK actor (1902-83); Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet leader (1906-82); Jean Genet, French writer (1910-86); Edith Piaf, French singer (1915-63); Richard Hammond, UK TV presenter (1969-); Ricky Ponting, Australian cricketer (1974-); Jake Gyllenhaal, US actor (1980-).