Today in History

332 BC – Reputed date for the death of Greek philosopher Aristotle, right, aged 62.

321 – Roman Emperor Constantine I decrees that the dies Solis (sun day) is the day of rest in the Empire.

1530 – The Pope denies King Henry VIII’s request for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon.

1842 – Maketu¯ Whareto¯tara, 17, son of a Nga¯puhi chief, becomes the first person to be officially executed in New Zealand, for the murders of five people in the Bay of Islands.

1876 – Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for his telephone.

1912 – Roald Amundsen announces he has reached the South Pole.

1918 – The Bolsheviks change their name to the Russian Communist Party.

1926 – The first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversation takes place, between New York City and London.

1933 – The game of Monopoly is invented.

1936 – Nazi Germany breaks conditions of the Treaty of Versailles by sending troops to the Rhineland.

1946 – Bikini Atoll islanders are evacuated by the US Government to make way for a nuclear testing site.

1947 – The Kuomintang and Communist Party of China resume full-fledged Civil War.

1965 – A march by civil rights demonstrators is broken up in Selma, Alabama, by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse.

1968 – The BBC broadcasts the news for the first time in colour on television.

1981 – Disneyland is the scene of a murder for the first time when an 18-year-old is stabbed to death.

1988 – Cyclone Bola hits the East Coast and

Hawke’s Bay, damaging houses, sweeping away bridges and sections of roads and railway lines. Three people die in a car swept away by floodwaters.

1999 – Death of film director Stanley Kubrick.

2005 – A fire set by rioting gang members kills 134 inmates of a provincial jail in the Dominican Republic.

2006 – A series of bombings rock a railway station and temple in Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city, killing 20 and injuring dozens.

2010 – Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win a best director Oscar, for The

Hurt Locker.

Birthdays

Wi Pere, NZ politician (1837-1915); Piet Mondrian, Dutch artist (1872-1944); Maurice Ravel, French composer (1875-1937); Doreen Blumhardt, NZ potter (1914-2009); Sir Viv Richards, Antiguan cricketer (1952-); Robert Harris, UK writer (1957-); Rik Mayall, UK actor (1958-2014); Ivan Lendl, Czech tennis player (1960-); Rachel Weisz, UK actress (1971-); Nicola Willis, NZ politician (1981-).