Today in History

1349 – Up to 3000 Jews are killed in Black Death riots in Efurt, Germany.

1556 – Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer is burned at the stake as a heretic.

1829 – Earthquake in Spain kills 6000.

1917 – Tsar Nicholas II and his family are arrested by revolutionary forces in Russia. 1918 – The Second Battle of the Somme, the last German offensive in World War I, begins.

1919 – Soviet Republic is proclaimed.

1935 – Persia is officially renamed Iran.

1960 – Almost 70 people are killed and more than 180 wounded when South African police fire on a black demonstration at Sharpeville.

1961 – The Beatles’ first appearance at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. 1965 – Martin Luther King and more than 3000 demonstrators begin a march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, the state capital, in favour of voting rights.

1975 – Ethiopia abolishes its monarchy after 3000 years. 1980 – US President Jimmy Carter announces the US will boycott the Moscow Olympics.

1994 – Anna Paquin , left, aged 11, becomes the first New Zealander to win an acting Oscar, as best supporting actress for The Piano.

2003 – Race Relations Day formally observed for the first time in New Zealand. The date marks the 1960 Sharpeville massacre.

2014 – Russia annexes Crimea, to international condemnation.

2018 – Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg admits it ‘‘made mistakes’’ after data on 50m users is harvested by Cambridge Analytica.

Birthdays

Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer (1685-1750); Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer (1839-81); Frank Sargeson, NZ writer (1903-82); Brian Clough, UK football coach (1935-2004); Margaret Mahy, NZ writer (1936-2012); Gary Oldman, UK actor (1958-); Ayrton Senna, Brazilian racing driver (1960-94); Rhys Darby, NZ actor (1974-).