Today in History

1853 – Elisha Graves Otis opens a shop in New York for his safety elevators and sells his first lift.

1863 – Death of Jacob Grimm, German philologist and collector of folk tales with his brother Wilhelm.

1946 – The first Cannes Film Festival starts.

1954 – The Mazengarb inquiry into ‘‘juvenile delinquency’’ blames the perceived promiscuity of New Zealand’s youth on working mothers, the ready availability of contraceptives, and young women enticing men to have sex.

1973 – Billie Jean King, left, defeats Bobby Riggs in a tennis match at Houston, Texas, billed as the Battle of the Sexes.

1994 – A pneumonic plague epidemic breaks out in Surat, an industrial city in western India. It causes widespread panic but only about 60 people die.

2000 – Britain’s MI6 spy headquarters is hit by a small missile fired from a rocket launcher in a high-profile strike at the intelligence services.

2002 – A glacial avalanche in Russia buries a village, killing more than 100 people.

2008 – A suicide truck bomb at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, kills 53 people including the Czech ambassador, and wounds 270 others.

2012 – Sixteen members of a dissident Amish group in Ohio are convicted of federal hate crimes and conspiracy for forcibly cutting the beards and hair of fellow Amish.