Today in History

1542 – Scots under King James V are routed by Britain at Battle of Solway Moss.

1783 – British evacuate New York, their last military position in the US during the Revolutionary War.

1903 – Timaru’s Bob Fitzsimmons becomes the first man to be world boxing champion in three weight divisions.

1952 – The world’s longest-running

play, The Mousetrap ,by Agatha

Christie, left, opens in London. 1986 – The Iran-Contra affair erupts as US President Ronald Reagan and Attorney-General Edwin Meese reveal that profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to Nicaraguan rebels.

1991 – President Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to hold the Soviet Union together are set back when seven republics fail to initial the proposed Union Treaty.

1992 – Representatives of 93 nations agree to speed efforts to phase out the production and use of chemicals that damage the Earth’s ozone layer.

1997 - A former member of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s entourage testifies at South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he saw her stab an activist to death.

2005 – An Austrian court rules that British historian David Irving must remain in custody on Holocaust denial charges despite his assertion that he now acknowledges the existence of Nazi-era gas chambers.

2007 – Pakistan’s exiled former prime minister Nawaz Sharif returns home and calls for end to emergency rule before elections.

2012 – Fire in a garment factory in Bangladesh that supplies retailers in the West kills at least 112 people.

Birthdays

Andrew Carnegie, industrialist, philanthropist (1835-1919); Joe DiMaggio, US baseball player (1914-99); Barbara Bevege, NZ cricketer (1942-99); Ian Bruce Deans, All Black (1960-2019); John F Kennedy Jr, entrepreneur (1960-99).