Today in History

1789 – Electors unanimously choose George Washington to be the first US president.

1924 – Mahatma Gandhi is freed after spending two years in jail in Bombay.

1927 – British driver Malcolm Campbell breaks the world land speed record in his car Bluebird, reaching 174.88mph (about 280kmh) at Pendine Sands, Wales.

1938 – Walt Disney releases Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

1945 – Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt meet at Yalta to discuss postwar Europe.

1948 – Sri Lanka becomes a selfgoverning dominion in British Commonwealth.

1969 – Palestine Liberation Organisation is founded, with Yasser Arafat, left, as leader.

1971 – British carmaker Rolls-Royce declares itself bankrupt.

1974 – Symbionese Liberation Army kidnaps 19-year-old heiress Patty Hearst from her apartment in Berkeley, California.

1975 – American Lynne Cox

becomes the first woman to swim Cook Strait, in 12 hours 7 minutes.

1976 – An earthquake measuring 7.5 magnitude kills 23,000 people near Guatemala City.

1983 – Karen Carpenter, left, dies

of anorexia.

1985 – USS Buchanan is refused entry to NZ because the US will neither confirm nor deny that the vessel has nuclear capability.

1997 – Sixteen months after being cleared of murder charges, a civil trial jury blames OJ Simpson for the killings of his ex-wife and her friend.

1998 – A 6.1-magnitude quake and subsequent tremors in Afghanistan kill at least 4500 people.

2004 – Mark Zuckerberg launches ‘‘the Facebook’’ as a Harvard-based social network.