Today in History

30BC – Death of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, according to calculations by some historians.

1816 – New Zealand’s first missionary school opens in Hohi (Oihi), in the Bay of Islands.

1851 – Isaac Singer is granted a patent on his sewing machine.

1895 – Child-carer Minnie Dean is hanged for the murders of two babies. She is the only woman to have been hanged in New Zealand. 1908 – Henry Ford’s company builds the first Model T car.

1914 – Britain declares war on Austria-Hungary.

1930 – Clarence Birdseye is granted a patent for a method to quick-freeze food.

1939 – The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland, premieres in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin.

1953 – The Soviet Union detonates its first hydrogen bomb.

1964 – Death of Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond.

1975 – Kiwi John Walker, right, becomes the first sub 3min 50sec miler, running 3min 49.4sec in Sweden.

1981 – IBM introduces its first personal computer, the model 5150.

1985 – A Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 crashes into a mountain, killing 520 people. Four survive.

2000 – All 118 crew on the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk die s after two explosions in its weapons bay.

2015 – Archaeologists at Liverpool St station in London find a mass grave of 30 bodies from the 1665 plague.

2017 – A car driven into a crowd protesting against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, kills one of the protesters.

Birthdays

George IV, UK monarch (1762-1830); Cecil B DeMille, US film director (1881-1959); Sir Keith Murdoch, Australian publisher (1885-1952); Erwin Schroedinger, Austrian physicist (1887-1961); Dick Tayler, NZ athlete (1948-); Mark Knopfler, UK musician (1949-); Pete Sampras, US tennis player (1971-); Jason Holland, NZ rugby coach (1972-).