Today in History

1883 – New York’s first Metropolitan Opera House (‘‘the old Met’’) 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.

1926 – Ernest Hemingway’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises ,is published in the United States.

1962 – US President John F. Kennedy addresses the nation on TV about Russian missile bases in Cuba, and imposes a naval blockade, starting the Cuban missile crisis.

1964 – French writer Jean-Paul Sartre rejects the Nobel Prize for Literature, saying it would reduce the impact of his writing.

1967 – Denny Hulme, left, 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.

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); Sir Donald McIntyre, NZ opera singer (1935-); Sir Derek Jacobi, UK actor (1938-); Catherine Deneuve, French actor (1943-); Sandra Coney, NZ writer/ campaigner (1944-); Arsene Wenger, French football coach

(1949-); Jeff Goldblum, US actor

(1952-).