Today in History

1869 – Te Kooti, right, defeated at Nga¯tapa, Poverty Bay. He and his followers escape, though about 120 are later captured and executed. Te Kooti and his key lieutenants seek sanctuary with Tu¯ hoe in the Urewera Range.

1885 – Dr William Grant of Davenport, Iowa, performs what is believed to be the first appendectomy.

1896 – Utah enters the Union as the 45th state of the United States. 1936 – Billboard magazine in US prints first popular music chart.

1948 – Burma (Myanmar) becomes an independent republic.

1951 – North Korean and Communist Chinese forces take Seoul, South Korea.

1958 – Sir Edmund Hillary’s fourman team, using modified tractors, become the first to reach the South Pole overland since Robert Falcon Scott in 1912, and the first to do so in motor vehicles.

1965 – US-born poet TS Eliot dies in London, aged 76.

1999 – The euro makes its debut as a financial unit in corporate and investment markets. It did not go into circulation until January 1, 2002.

2007 – Nancy Pelosi becomes the first female Speaker of the US House of Representatives.

2010 – The world’s tallest building, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, opens.

2016 – Robert Stigwood, Australian impresario who produced the Saturday Night Fever and Grease films and soundtracks, dies aged 81.

Birthdays

Jacob Grimm, German author (1785-1863); Louis Braille, French inventor of reading system for the blind (1809-52); Sir Isaac Pitman, UK shorthand inventor (1813-97); ‘‘General Tom Thumb’’(Charles Sherwood Stratton), US circus midget (1838-1883); Floyd Patterson, US boxer (1934-2006); Rick Stein, UK chef/broadcaster (1947-); Michael Stipe, US musician with REM (1960-); Dame Susan Devoy, NZ squash player/race relations commissioner (1964-).