Today in History

1818 – Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is published.

1845 – Colonial troops abandon Korora¯reka (Russell) under attack from several hundred Nga¯puhi warriors, led by Ho¯ne Heke and Kawiti.

1918 – Moscow becomes the capital of revolutionary Russia, replacing St Petersburg.

1938 – German forces enter Austria. 1945 – The huge Krupps munitions works in Germany is destroyed when 1000 Allied bombers take part in the biggest daylight air raid in history.

1955 – Death of Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin in 1928.

1966 – Military coup led by Indonesian General Suharto begins. 1985 – Mikhail Gorbachev, left, replaces Konstantin Chernenko as Soviet leader.

1990 – Lithuania declares its independence from the USSR, becoming the first Soviet republic to do so; General Augusto Pinochet steps down as Chile’s president. 2004 – A series of bombs hidden in backpacks explode, blowing apart four commuter trains in Madrid, killing 193 people and wounding about 2000.

2006 – Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, on trial at The Hague for war crimes, is found dead in his prison cell.

2011 – A big earthquake in Japan triggers a tsunami that kills up to 20,000 people, and devastates the city of Sendai and the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

2018 – National People’s Congress in China approves removal of term limits for a leader, allowing Xi Jinping to be president for life.

Birthdays

Harold Wilson, UK prime minister (1916-95); Rupert Murdoch, Australian-born media tycoon (1931-); Nigel Lawson, UK politician (1932-); Douglas Adams, UK writer (1952-2001); Didier Drogba, Ivorian footballer (1978-).