Today in History

1431 – Joan of Arc is accused of relapsing into heresy by donning male clothing again, providing justification for her execution.

1742 – The first indoor swimming pool opens, in London.

1830 – US Congress authorises native Indians to be removed from all states to the western prairie.

1845 – A fire in Quebec City, Canada, destroys more than 1500 houses. Another huge fire ravages the city a month later.

1912 – Australian Jimmy Matthews becomes the first bowler to take two hat-tricks in the same cricket test, and on the same day.

1920 – Fingerprints are used to help convict a murderer in New Zealand. Police found Dennis Gunn’s prints on three cash boxes from a robbery in which Auckland postmaster Augustus Braithwaite was killed. Gunn is hanged in Auckland on June 22.

1936 – Alan Turing, left, submits his paper On Computable Numbers to a mathematics society, setting out the theoretical basis for modern computers.

1961 – Peter Benenson publishes ‘‘The Forgotten Prisoners’’ in The Observer, in London, heralding the creation of Amnesty International.

1972 – Burglars break into the Democratic National Headquarters at Watergate in Washington DC.

1995 – At least 1500 people die in an earthquake on Sakhalin Island in Russia’s far east.

2019 – Johnson & Johnson goes on trial in Oklahoma accused of deceptively marketing painkillers and downplaying risks of addiction, helping to create the United States’ ‘‘opioid epidemic’’.

Birthdays

George I, king of Britain (1660-1727); Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, French physician (1738-1814); Ian Fleming, UK writer (1908-64); Rudy Giuliani, US lawyer/politician (1944-); Gladys Knight, US singer (1944-); Kylie Minogue, Australian singer-actor (1968-); Carey Mulligan, UK actor (1985-).