Today in History

1783 – British evacuate New York, their last military position in the US during the Revolutionary War.

1903 – Bob Fitzsimmons, of Timaru, becomes the first man to be world boxing champion in three weight divisions.

1952 – The world’s longest-running play, The Mousetrap, by Agatha Christie, right, opens in London.

1963 – Three days after his assassination, John F. Kennedy is buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

1986 – The Iran-Contra affair erupts as US President Ronald Reagan and Attorney-General Edwin Meese reveal that profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to Nicaraguan rebels.

1991 – President Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to hold the Soviet Union together are set back when seven republics fail to initial the proposed Union Treaty.

1992 – Representatives of 93 nations agree to speed efforts to phase out the production and use of chemicals that damage the Earth’s ozone layer.

1997 – A former member of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s entourage testifies at South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he saw her stab an activist to death. 2005 – An Austrian court rules that British historian David Irving must remain in custody on Holocaust denial charges despite his assertion that he now acknowledges the existence of Nazi-era gas chambers. 2012 – Fire in a garment factory in Bangladesh that supplies retailers in the West kills at least 112 people. 2019 – Louis Vuitton (LVMH) buys jeweller Tiffany & Co for more than US$16 billion.

Birthdays

Andrew Carnegie, industrialist/ philanthropist (1835-1919); Joe DiMaggio, US baseball player (1914-99); Barbara Bevege, NZ cricketer (1942-99); Dame Lowell Goddard, NZ judge (1948-); Bruce Deans, All Black (1960-2019).