Today in History

1556 – Shaanxi earthquake, the deadliest ever recorded, kills a reported 830,000 in China.

1855 – A magnitude 8.2 quake strikes Wellington, raising the harbour and providing flat land on which the CBD is subsequently built; nine deaths reported across lower North Island.

1859 – Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii begins eruption that lasts 300 days. 1920 – Netherlands refuses to surrender Germany’s former Kaiser Wilhelm II to Allies for punishment as World War I criminal.

1944 – Painter Edvard Munch dies.

1951 – Twenty yachts leave Wellington bound for Lyttelton in race to mark Canterbury centenary; in a southerly storm, two yachts and their 10 crew lost are lost.

1957 – First frisbees rolled out by Whamo-O toy company in US. 1973 – US President Richard M Nixon, left, announces an accord to end the Vietnam War. 1985 – Debate in Britain’s House of Lords is live on TV for the first time.

1989 – Painter Salvador Dali dies.

2002 – A previously unknown militant group kidnaps Daniel Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal newspaper, in Karachi, Pakistan. Pearl, who had been working on a story about Islamist militant groups in that country, is later killed.

2019 – US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disinvites President Donald Trump from making a State of the Union address in Congress, citing government shutdown.

Birthdays

Edouard Manet, French artist (1832-1883); Dorothy Winstone, NZ educator (1919-2014); Jeanne Moreau, French actress (1928-2017); Derek Walcott, Caribbean poet and Nobel laureate (1930-2017); Margaret Bazley, NZ civil servant (1938-); Rutger Hauer, Dutch-born actor (1944-2019); Richard Dean Anderson, US actor (1950-); Adam Parore, NZ wicketkeeper (1971-); TJ Perenara, All Black (1992-).