Today in History

1812 – A 7.7-magnitude earthquake destroys 90 per cent of Caracas, Venezuela, and kills an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people.

1820 – Mormon church leader

Joseph Smith, right, has his "First Vision" in a wooded area of New York, according to Mormon scholars.

1827 – Death of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven.

1896 – Sixty-five miners die of gas poisoning after an explosion in a coalmine on the West Coast in New Zealand’s deadliest industrial accident.

1913 – More than 1400 people die in floods in US states of Ohio, Indiana and Texas.

1942 – Nazi Germany begins sending Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

1945 – The Battle of Iwo Jima ends after about 22,000 Japanese are killed or captured and more than 4500 US troops are killed.

1953 – US researcher Dr Jonas E

Salk announces a new vaccine to immunise against polio.

1992 – Britain’s Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah Ferguson, separate; former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson is sentenced to six years in prison for rape.

1997 – The bodies of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate technoreligious cult are found in a mansion at Rancho Santa Fe, California, after their mass suicide.

1998 – Bill Clinton becomes the first American head of state to visit South Africa. 1999 – Assisted-suicide crusader Jack Kevorkian is convicted in the US of second-degree murder for fatally injecting a terminally ill man.

Birthdays

William Massey, NZ prime minister (1856-1925); Tennessee Williams, US playwright (1911-83); Leonard Nimoy, US actor (1931-2015); Fiona Kidman, NZ author (1940-); Diana Ross, US singer (1944-); John Rowles, NZ singer-songwriter (1947-); Noeline Taurua, NZ netball player and coach (1968-).