Today in History

1370 – Building begins on the Bastille fortress in Paris.

1500 – Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral is the first European to arrive in Brazil.

1509 – Henry VIII becomes king of England on death of his father, Henry VII.

1838 – English steamship Sirius docks in New York city, the first transAtlantic steam passenger service.

1915 – German army launches the first major poison gas attack of World War I, on French troops at Ypres, Belgium.

1936 – Alliance between Ra¯tana Church and Labour is cemented between Tahupo¯ tiki Wiremu

Ra¯ tana, left, and Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage.

1992 – Petrol in the sewer system in Guadalajara, Mexico, explodes, killing more than 200 people.

1994 – 7000 Tutsis are slaughtered by Hutu in a stadium in Rwanda; disgraced former US President Richard Nixon dies.

1997 – Peruvian troops storm the Japanese ambassador’s mansion in Lima, and rescue 72 hostages held for four months.

1999 – Nato bombs Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s home in Belgrade.

2013 – A seriously wounded Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is charged in hospital with Boston Marathon bombing.

2016 – Paris Agreement on climate change is signed in New York, binding

195 nations to an increase in the global average temperature of less than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

Birthdays

Isabella, Queen of Castile (1451- 1504); Immanuel Kant, German philosopher (1724-1804); Vladimir Lenin, Soviet leader (1870-1924); Vladimir Nabokov, Russian/US novelist (1899-1977); Robert Oppenheimer, US physicist (1904-67); Glen Campbell, US singer (1936-2017); Jack Nicholson, US actor (1937-); Dave Loveridge, All Black (1952-); Ngani Laumape, All Black (1993-).