Today in History

1746 – Royalist troops defeat Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart at Battle of Culloden.

1761 – Wax sculptor ‘‘Marie’’ Tussaud born in France.

1892 – NZ Rugby Football Union founded.

1900 – The first books of US postage stamps are issued.

1917 – Lenin, right, returns to Russia from exile.

1943– Hallucinogenic effects of

LSD discovered.

1945 – US troops enter Nuremberg, Germany, in World War II; in his first speech to Congress, President Harry Truman pledges to carry out the war and peace policies of his predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt.

1947 – Fertiliser explosion kills 581 in Texas City; financier Bernard Baruch coins the term ‘‘Cold War’’.

1970 – Alpine avalanche landson children’s sanitarium at Sallanches, France, killing 72 people.

1973 – Arthur Allan Thomas is again convicted of the murders of

Harvey and Jeanette Crewe at his second trial. He was pardoned in 1979 and the killings remain unsolved.

1997 – Police recommend indicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a corruption scandal.

2003 – Treaty of Accession signed in Athens admitting 10 new member states to the EU: Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

2007 – A 23-year-old student at Virginia Tech campus in the United

States kills 32 people.

Birthdays

Jacques Thibaut, French novelist (1844-1924); Wilbur Wright, aviator (1867-1912); Charles Chaplin, UKborn actor-director (1889-1977); Spike Milligan, UK comedian (1918-2002); Henry Mancini, US composer-conductor (1924-94); Herbie Mann, US musician (1930-2003); Queen Margrethe II of Denmark (1940-); Ellen Barkin, US actor (1954-); Laura Langman, NZ netball player (1986-).