Today in History

1455 – Battle of St Albans is fought in England’s War of the Roses.

1797 – During a financial crisis, a cartoon by James Gilray appears depicting the Bank of England as a haggard old woman. This is generally thought to be the origin of the bank’s nickname The Old Lady of Threadneedle St.

1868 – Kit Carson, American frontiersman and soldier who contributed greatly to the westward expansion of the US, dies.

1926 – Lebanon is proclaimed a republic by France.

1934 – Aviatrix Jean Batten, left, arrives in Darwin in a DH-60M Moth, setting a women’s record for England-Australia flights of 14 days 23 hours 25 minutes.

1937 – John D Rockefeller, US multimillionaire and founder of the Standard Oil Company, dies.

1949 – West Germany is created from territory occupied by the US, Britain and France.

1966 – Princess Piki, daughter of King Koroki, is selected as the sixth Ma¯ori monarch, and first Queen. She assumes her mother’s name, Te Atairangikaahu.

1995 – Israel suspends plans to confiscate Arab land in east Jerusalem, acknowledging it can no longer act at will to strengthen the Jewish hold on the city.

2015 – John Forbes Nash, mathematical genius whose struggle with schizophrenia was chronicled in the movie A Beautiful

Mind, dies in a car crash in New Jersey, aged 86.