Today in History

1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte arrives on the Atlantic island of St Helena to begin his final exile.

1877 – George Grey, twice a governor of New Zealand, becomes premier.

1917 – Mata Hari, a Dutch dancer who spied for the Germans, is executed by a firing squad outside Paris.

1942 – Seventeen New Zealand coastwatchers and five civilians captured in the Gilbert Islands (now Kiribati) are beheaded by the Japanese in World War II.

1945 – Pierre Laval, the puppet leader of Nazi-occupied Vichy France, is executed for treason.

1946 – Former Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering, left, commits suicide in his prison cell.

1990 – Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev wins the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work in ending Cold War tensions.

2007 – Police arrest 18 people, including Tu¯ hoe activist Tame It, in ‘‘anti-terror’’ raids in Bay of Plenty.

In 2013, the Independent Police Conduct Authority found police had ‘‘unnecessarily frightened and intimidated’’ people.

2017 – US actress Alyssa Milano posts tweet credited with launching the #metoo movement. She wrote: ‘‘If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’.’’

Birthdays

Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher (1844-1900); PG Wodehouse, UK author (1881-1975); JK Galbraith, US economist (1908-2006); Lee Iacocca, US businessman (1924-2019); Mario Puzo, US author (1920-1999); Michel Foucault, French philosopher (1926-1984); Penny Marshall, US film-maker (1943-2018); Richard Carpenter, US musician (1946-); Sarah Ferguson, UK royal (1959-); Didier Deschamps, French footballer/coach (1968-); Susy Pryde, NZ cyclist (1973-); Wendy Frew, NZ netball player (1984-); Mesut Ozil, German footballer (1988-).