Today in History

1773 – The King of Tonga presents Captain James Cook with a giant turtle, which dies in London in 1966.

1883 – New York’s Metropolitan Opera House opens with a production of Gounod’s Faust.

1909 – French aviator Elise de Laroche, better known by the title Baronne de Laroche, makes her first solo flight, a distance of 300 metres. In March 1910, she became the first qualified female pilot.

1910 – British murderer Dr Hawley Crippen is sentenced to death at the Old Bailey in London.

1962 – South African activist leader Nelson Mandela pleads not guilty at the start of his treason trial. 1964 – French writer Jean-Paul Sartre, left, rejects the Nobel Prize for Literature, saying it would reduce the impact of his writing.

1967 – Denny Hulme becomes the first – and so far only – New Zealander to win the Formula One world championship.

1972 – Death of the poet James K Baxter, in Auckland, aged 46.

1992 – A UN-sponsored commission says it has discovered signs of a mass grave near the Croatian city of Vukovar.

2012 – US cyclist Lance Armstrong is stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life, for taking performance-enhancing drugs.

2014 – Researchers say breathing polluted air in the first two years of life is linked to autism.

2018 – Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison makes a public apology to victims of child sexual abuse in institutions.

Birthdays

Franz Liszt, Hungarian composer

(1811-86); Sarah Bernhardt, French actress (1844-1923); Ivan Bunin, Russian writer, Nobel laureate

(1870-1953); Catherine Deneuve, French actress (1943-); Arsene Wenger, French football coach

(1949-); Gary McCormick, NZ writer/ broadcaster (1951-); Jeff Goldblum, US actor (1952-); Shaggy, Jamaican singer (1968-).