Today in History

1769 – French explorer Jean Francois Marie de Surville sights land – the Hokianga – while sailing around the northern tip of New Zealand.

1800 – Washington DC is established as the capital of the United States.

1870 – Joseph Rainey, right, of South Carolina becomes the first black US congressman.

1899 – African-American George Grant receives the first patent for a golf tee.

1913 – The Mona Lisa is recovered in Italy, two years after it was stolen from the Louvre museum in Paris.

1953 – US test pilot Chuck Yeager reaches Mach 2.3 (2.3 times the speed of sound) in a Bell X-1A rocket plane.

1961 – New Zealand’s first Golden Kiwi lottery is drawn.

1975 – Sara Jane Moore pleads guilty to trying to kill US President Gerald Ford.

1985 – An Arrow Air charter flight crashes after takeoff in Newfoundland, killing 248 American soldiers and eight crew members.

2004 – New Zealand’s master athletics coach, Arthur Lydiard, dies of a heart attack aged 87, while on a lecture tour in the US.

2008 – A British jury decides a string of police failures caused the death of a Brazilian electrician shot by anti-terror police, after he was mistaken for a suicide bomber.

2009 – Emails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled sceptics and discussed hiding data – but the messages do not support claims that the science of global warming was faked.

Birthdays

John Jay, US revolutionary (1745-1829); Gustave Flaubert, French author (1821-1880); Edvard Munch, Norwegian artist (1863-1944); Frank Sinatra, US singer/actor (1915-98); Dionne Warwick, US singer (1940-); Bill Nighy, UK actor (1949-); Mayim Bialik, US actress (1975-); Yuvraj Singh, Indian cricketer (1981-).