Today in History
1527 – Florence becomes a republic. 1532 – Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro lands with a small band of soldiers on the northern coast of Peru.
1568 – Mary Queen of Scots, right, flees to
England.
1717 – Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, is imprisoned in the Bastille for nearly a year, after satirical attacks on the government.
1763 – Samuel Johnson meets future biographer James Boswell.
1846 – Eight settlers are killed in a Nga¯ti Toa attack on Boulcott Farm, in the Hutt Valley.
1868 – US Senate votes against impeaching President Andrew Johnson and acquits him of committing ‘‘high crimes and misdemeanours’’.
1920 – Joan of Arc is canonised in Rome.
1929 – The first Academy Awards are presented during a banquet in Hollywood.
1943 – Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto ends; the Dambusters raids begin on the Moehne and Eder dams in the Ruhr valley with bouncing bombs.
1948 – Chaim Weizmann is elected first president of Israel.
1956 – England spin bowler Jim Laker takes all 10 Australian first-innings wickets for just
88 runs, playing for Surrey in a tour match at The Oval, London.
1975 – Japanese climber Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mt Everest.
1966 – The Beach Boys release their groundbreaking album Pet Sounds, though initial reviews were lukewarm.
1981 – The All Whites football team beat Australia 2-0 in Sydney – a defining moment in their successful qualifying campaign for the 1982 World Cup finals.
1985 – Three scientists from the British
Antarctic Survey announce in the journal Nature their detection of abnormally low levels of ozone over the South Pole.
1988 – US Surgeon General C Everett Koop reports that nicotine is as addictive as heroin.
1989 – Hundreds of thousands arrive in Beijing to support hunger strikers in Tiananmen Square.
1995 – Japanese police arrest cult leader Shoko Asahara after a nerve-gas attack killed
12 on Tokyo’s subways two months earlier. 2005 – Kuwait permits women’s suffrage in a 35-23 National Assembly vote.
2007 – Nicolas Sarkozy becomes the 23rd president of France.
2019 – UK talk show The Jeremy Kyle Show is axed by ITV after a guest dies.
Birthdays
Maria Agnesi, Italian mathematician (1718-99); HE Bates, UK author (1905-74); Henry Fonda, US actor (1905-82); Woody Herman, US jazz musician (1913-87); Liberace, US pianist (1919-87); Pierce Brosnan, actor (1953-); Krist Novoselic, US musician (1965-); Janet Jackson, US pop singer (1966-); Melanie Lynskey, NZ actor (1977-); Thomas Brodie Sangster, UK actor (1990-).