Today in History

1540 – Marriage of England’s King Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves is annulled.

1762 – Empress Catherine of Russia forces her husband, Peter, to abdicate, and takes the throne, later becoming known as Catherine the Great.

1816 – The United Provinces of the Rio de La Plata (now Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and part of Bolivia) declare themselves independent from Spain.

1877 – The first Wimbledon tennis championships are held.

1900 – The Commonwealth of Australia is established by the passing of an act of the British Parliament.

1941 – British cryptologists break German Enigma code for Eastern front operations.

1947 – The engagement of Britain’s Princess Elizabeth and naval lieutenant Philip Mountbatten is announced.

1955 – Rock Around the Clock, by Bill Haley and His Comets, becomes the first rock’n’roll single to hit No 1 on Billboard’s pop charts.

1966 – By winning the British Open, Jack Nicklaus becomes the fourth man to win all four golf majors.

1982 – Michael Fagan breaks into Buckingham Palace and enters the Queen’s bedroom.

1986 – New Zealand’s Parliament votes to decriminalise consensual homosexual practices between men.

1990 – New Zealand’s Richard Hadlee takes 5-53 against England at Edgbaston to end his test career with 431 wickets.

1993 – The remains of Tsar Nicholas II and his family are positively identified after being excavated from a mass grave in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

2001 – Mockumentary The Office, written by

Ricky Gervais, left, and Stephen Merchant, debuts on British TV.

2004 – A US Senate report concludes that the CIA provided unfounded assessments of the threat posed by Iraq, on which the George W Bush administration relied to justify going to war.

2006 – Italy beat France on penalties to win the Fifa World Cup in Berlin.

2011 – South Sudan becomes the world’s newest nation, after declaring its independence from Sudan.

2018 – Boris Johnson resigns as British foreign secretary.

2020 – US Supreme Court rules in favour of a New York prosecutor’s demands for Donald Trump’s tax records.

Birthdays

Elias Howe, US inventor of sewing machine (1819-67); Dame Barbara Cartland, UK novelist (1901-2000); Sir Edward Heath, UK politician (1916-2005); Donald Rumsfeld, US politician (1932-2021); David Hockney, UK artist (1937-); Dover Samuels, NZ politician (1939-); Dean Koontz, US author (1945-); OJ Simpson, US athlete (1947-); Peter Land, NZ actor (1953-); Tom Hanks, US actor (1956-); Courtney Love, US musician (1964-); Jack White, US musician (1975-); Bradley-John (BJ) Watling, South African-born NZ cricketer (1985-); Earl Bamber, NZ racing driver (1990-).