Today in History

1649 – Trial of England’s King Charles I begins.

1790 – Second Fleet sails from England with 1006 convicts aboard for new settlement at Sydney Cove.

1845 – Ma¯ori chief Hone Heke chops down the British flagstaff above Kororareka for the third time, in protest at European colonisation – his actions eventually leading to war in the Far North.

1883 – First electric lighting system employing overhead wires, built by Thomas Edison, begins service at Roselle, New Jersey.

1960 – United States and Japan sign treaty of mutual security.

1967 – Nineteen people die in the Strongman Mine explosion at Runanga, near Greymouth. An inquiry finds safety regulations were not followed.

1990 – Mayor Marion Barry of Washington DC is charged with crack cocaine possession.

1998 – Rock ’n’ roll pioneer Carl Perkins, whose hit song Blue Suede

Shoes helped lift Elvis Presley to stardom, dies aged 65.

2000 – Film star Hedy Lamarr, left, 86, found dead in her Florida home.

2004 – The International Atomic Energy Agency agrees with the United States and Britain that it will oversee the dismantling of Libya’s atomic arms programme.

2013 – Calcium deposits are discovered on Mars by Nasa’s Curiosity Rover; Lance Armstrong admits to doping in all seven of his Tour de France victories

Birthdays

James Watt, Scottish engineerinventor (1736-1819); Robert E Lee, confederate general in the US Civil War (1807-1870); Edgar Allen Poe, US writer (1809-1849); Paul Cezanne, French painter (1839-1906); Sir Arthur Coningham, NZ military officer, tactical air warfare pioneer (1895-1948); Robin Hyde, NZ writer (1906-1939); Ray Henwood, Welsh-born NZ actor (1937-2019); Janis Joplin, US singer (1943-1970); Aaron Slight, NZ motorcycle racer (1966-).