Today in History

1590 – John White, governor of Roanoke Island colony in North Carolina, returns from England to find no trace of the colonists he left there three years earlier.

1819 – The Church Missionary Society establishes New Zealand’s second mission station at Kerikeri.

1876 – Richard Wagner’s opera Gotterdammerung premieres in Bayreuth. 1877 – Billy the Kid wounds an Arizona blacksmith who dies the next day. He was the famous outlaw’s first victim. 1903 – Newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, right, donates $1 million to Columbia University and begins the Pulitzer prizes in the United States.

1915 – A patent is issued for an ‘‘enginestarting device’’, the first electric starter for cars. Charles Kettering’s design replaced the use of iron hand cranks.

1942 – Italian transport ship Nino Bixio is torpedoed by a British submarine in the Mediterranean and 118 New Zealand prisoners of war die.

1943 – Allied forces gain control in Sicily in World War II.

1945 – Korea is divided into North and South Korea along the 38th parallel.

1946 – George Orwell’s Animal Farm is published in Britain.

1980 – Azaria Chamberlain disappears, leading to what was then the most publicised trial in Australian history.

1987 – Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler’s former deputy, is found strangled in Spandau Prison in Berlin at the age of 93, apparently the victim of suicide.

1998 – United States President Bill Clinton is questioned before a court panel about his relationship with former intern Monica Lewinsky.

1999 – An earthquake in northwestern Turkey kills more than 17,000 people and leaves more than 250,000 homeless.

2012 – Russian feminist group Pussy Riot, who took over a cathedral in a raucous prayer for deliverance from Vladimir Putin, are jailed for two years for hooliganism.

2017 – A van rams into crowds on Las Ramblas, Barcelona, in a terror attack that kills 16 people and injures 120; One Nation party leader Pauline Hanson wears a burqa into the Australian parliament.

Birthdays

Davy Crockett, US western pioneer (1786-1836); Samuel Goldwyn, US film producer (1879-1974); Mae West, US actress (1892-1980); Elsie Locke, NZ writer and feminist (1912-2001); Mark Felt, US

FBI agent and Watergate informant (1913-2008); Maureen O’Hara, Irish-born actress (1920-2015); Ted Hughes, UK poet (1930-98); V S Naipaul, Trinidadian novelist (1932-2018); Robert De Niro, US actor (1943-); Larry Ellison, US businessman (1944-); Julian Fellowes, UK actor/screenwriter (1949-); Sean Penn, US actor (1960-); Jim Courier, US tennis player (1970-); Thierry Henry, French footballer (1977-).