Today in History

1840 – First adhesive postage stamps, the Penny Black and the Twopenny Blue, go on sale in UK. 1869 – Colonial troops invade the Urewera to punish Tu¯ hoe for supporting Te Kooti.

1882 – United States bans Chinese immigration for 10 years.

1889 – The World’s Fair, with the new Eiffel Tower, opens in Paris. 1910 – Death of King Edward VII. 1919 – Death of US children’s author Lyman Frank Baum, famous for his Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

1937 – German dirigible Hindenburg, left, explodes and burns on landing in New Jersey, killing 36.

1941 – Josef Stalin becomes Soviet prime minister.

1954 – The UK’s Roger Bannister runs the mile in 3:59.4 in Oxford.

1976 – Earthquake strikes the Italian town of Udine, killing 973 people.

1989 – Chinese students in Tiananmen Square send new appeal to government for dialogue on their demands for democracy.

2000 – Irish Republican Army announces it will soon begin disarming.

2013 – The screams of Amanda Berry, one of three young women imprisoned in Cleveland, Ohio, for about a decade by Ariel Castro, are heard by a neighbour.

2014 – The Vatican discloses that over the past decade it has defrocked 848 priests who raped or molested children and sanctioned another 2572 with lesser penalties; Rolf Harris goes on trial in London for indecent assault of four girls aged between seven and 19.

Birthdays

Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychologist (1856-1939); Orson Welles, US actor-director (1915-85); Rubin ‘‘Hurricane’’ Carter, US boxer (1937-2014); Bob Seger, US musician (1945-); Graham Brazier, NZ musician (1952-2015); Rob Fyfe, NZ businessman (1961-); George Clooney, US actor (1961-); James Shaw, NZ politician (1973-).