Today in History

1861 – The Pony Express mail service between Missouri and California ends after only 19 months.

1863 – An international conference begins in Geneva aimed at improving medical conditions on battlefields. It marks the beginning of the Red Cross.

1942 – The Women Jurors Act allows New Zealand women aged between 25 and 60 to have their names placed on the jury list on the same basis as men – if they so desired. 1947 – US actors Humphrey Bogart and

Lauren Bacall, above, fly to Washington to protest against alleged violations of personal freedom by the House Un-American Activities Committee in hearings on Communist infiltration in Hollywood.

1951 – Winston Churchill returns as British prime minister, at the age of 76.

1955 – Republic of South Vietnam is proclaimed under Ngo Dinh Diem.

1962 – Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev offers to withdraw missiles from Cuba if US removes bases in Turkey, but is rebuffed.

1977 – The world’s last natural case of smallpox is discovered in Somalia.

1979 – South Korean President Park ChungHee is slain by his lifelong friend Kim Jae Kyu, head of the Korean intelligence agency.

1994 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Jordanian counterpart Abdel Salam Majali sign a peace treaty ending 46 years of hostility.

1996 – The United Nations evacuates aid workers from a relief camp in eastern Zaire, leaving half a million Hutu refugees from

Rwanda to fend for themselves.

1999 – Britain’s House of Lords votes to end the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the upper chamber of Parliament.

2001 – US President George W Bush signs the Patriot Act into law, giving police and intelligence agencies vast new anti-terror powers.

2002 – Russian counter-terrorism forces storm a theatre in Moscow, after flooding it with knockout gas, bringing an end to a hostage crisis that had begun on October 23. At least 119 of the 750 hostages are killed.

2007 – Nine French citizens who are part of the group L’Arche de Zoe are arrested in Chad after they tried to fly more than 100 African children to France, saying it wanted to save them from the crisis in neighbouring Darfur.

2012 – Former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi is convicted of tax fraud and sentenced to four years in prison.

2017 – Jacinda Ardern is sworn in as prime minister of New Zealand, becoming the world’s youngest female head of government. Birthdays

Georges Danton, French revolutionary leader (1759-1794); Bob Hoskins, UK actor (1942-2014); Hillary Clinton, US politician (1947-); Alan Duff, NZ writer (1950-); Natalie Merchant, US musician (1963-); Keith Urban, NZ-born musician (1967-); Jan Logie, NZ politician (1969-); Kieran Read, All Black (1985-).