Today in History

1564 – English poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe is baptised.

1797 – The Bank of England issues the first £1 note.

1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte and his supporters leave Elba to start a 100-day re-conquest of France.

1844 – Wellington lawyer William Brewer suffers fatal injuries after being shot in a duel with another lawyer, H Ross. The case prompts calls for duelling to be outlawed.

1863 – Abraham Lincoln signs the National Currency Act, establishing a single national US currency.

1885 – Berlin Conference gives Congo to Belgium and Nigeria to Britain.

1918 – German planes bomb Venice during World War I.

1935 – Hitler authorises the founding of the Reich Luftwaffe.

1936 – Military coup in Japan replaces Koki Hirota as premier.

1951 – The 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution, limiting a president to two terms of office, is ratified.

1952 – Winston Churchill announces that Britain has produced its own atomic bomb.

1982 – Martin Crowe makes his test cricket debut for New Zealand v Australia in Wellington.

1983 – Michael Jackson’’s Thriller album hits No 1 in the US, and stays there for 37 weeks.

1993 – A bomb at New York’s World Trade Centre kills six people and injures hundreds.

2001 – The Taliban destroys two giant Buddha statues in Bamiyan, Afghanistan.

Birthdays

Victor Hugo, French author

(1802-85); Levi Strauss, German manufacturer (1829-1902); William F Cody (Buffalo Bill), US frontier scout

(1846-1917); Herbert Dow, US chemical industrialist (1866-1930); Lloyd Geering, NZ theologian (1918-); Antoine ‘‘Fats’’ Domino, US musician

(1928-2017); Ariel Sharon, Israeli politician (1928-2014); Johnny Cash, US musician (1932-2003); Helen Clark, NZ politician (1950-); Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Norwegian football coach (1973-).