Today in History

1618 – Sir Walter Raleigh is executed for treason in London.

1787 – The opera Don Giovanni, with music by Wolfgang

Amadeus Mozart, right, premieres in Prague.

1894 – 121 lives are lost when the Union Steam Ship Company steamer Wairarapa hits Miners Head, on the northern tip of Great Barrier Island.

1901 – US President William

McKinley’s assassin, Leon Czolgosz, is executed.

1919 – New Zealand passes the Women’s Parliamentary Rights Act, allowing women to stand for election to the House of Representatives.

1929 – The New York stock market collapses, as investors trade 16 million shares in a single day. The losses lead to the Great Depression.

1956 – Israel invades Egypt, initiating the Suez Crisis.

1958 – Boris Pasternak refuses the Nobel Prize for Literature, under

pressure from Soviet authorities.

1972 – Palestinian guerrillas hijack German airliner and gain release of three people seized in massacre at Munich Olympics.

1995 – Forgotten Silver, a film by Peter Jackson and Costa Botes about a forgotten legend of early NZ cinema, screens on TV. The next day it’s revealed as a hoax.

1998 – John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth 36 years earlier, rides the space shuttle into orbit at age 77.

2001 – The NZ government confirms sweeping surveillance powers over phone networks and screening of domestic air travellers will become permanent features of defences against global terrorism.

2015 – China announces the end of its one-child policy after 35 years.

Birthdays

Joseph Goebbels, Nazi minister

(1897-1945); Robert Hardy, UK actor

(1925-2017); Richard Dreyfuss, US actor (1947-); Anthony Mosse, NZ swimmer (1964-); Winona Ryder, US actress (1971-).