Today in History
1536 – Anne Boleyn is sent to Tower of London, where she is eventually beheaded.
1670 – King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson’s Bay Company, giving it effective control over the region around North America’s Hudson Bay.
1868 – The clipper Celestial Queen arrives at Port Chalmers, with the first shipment of live fish ova from England, to provide sport for the settlers. But none survive.
1924 – A murder in London, in which police have to pick up the victim’s remains with their bare hands, makes rubber gloves standard equipment at crime scenes.
1933 – The legend of the Loch Ness monster is born, with a sighting reported in the
Inverness Courier. A local couple claim to have seen ‘‘an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface’’.
1936 – Sergei Prokofiev’s musical Peter and the Wolf premieres in Moscow.
1945 – The Soviet Union announces the fall of Berlin, and Allies announce surrender of Nazi troops in Italy and parts of Austria. 1949 – Arthur Miller wins a Pulitzer Prize for
Death of a Salesman. 1952 – Jet plane passenger service launched in the US.
1964 – Wellington tram No 252 makes the last electric tram trip in New Zealand.
1965 – The first satellite television programme links nine countries and more than 300 million viewers.
1967 – British Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s Labour government decides to seek membership of European Common Market.
1972 – J Edgar Hoover dies, after nearly 50 years as head of the FBI.
1982 – Argentine cruiser General Belgrano is sunk by a British submarine, killing 368, the worst single death toll of the 10-week war over the Falkland Islands.
1994 – Nelson Mandela, left, and the African National Congress claim victory in the first democratic election in South Africa.
2008 – Cyclone Nargis makes landfall in Myanmar, killing more than 130,000 people and leaving millions homeless.
2011 – Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI’s most wanted man, is killed in his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in a firefight with US forces.
2016 – Leicester City win the English Premier League football title after starting the season at odds of 5000-1.
Birthdays
Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia (1729-96); Jerome K Jerome, UK writer (1859-1927); Theodor Herzl, founder of Zionism (1860-1904); Baron Manfred von Richthofen, German pilot (1892-1918); Bianca Jagger, Nicaraguan socialite (1945-); David Suchet, UK actor (1946-); James Dyson, UK entrepreneur (1947-); Brian Lara, West Indian cricketer (1969-); David Beckham, UK footballer (1975-); Gemma McCaw, NZ hockey player (1990-); Rhys Jones, NZ military officer (1960-); Dwayne Johnson, US-born actor (1972-); Lily Allen, UK singer (1985-).