Today in History
1783 – William Pitt the Younger becomes the youngest British prime minister, at 24.
1793 – Napoleon Bonaparte takes Toulon, southern France, from Britain and Spain in his first major military victory.
1842 – The United States formally recognises the independence of Hawaii.
1843 – Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, right, is published in England; the first A&P show in New Zealand is held in Auckland, which was then mostly farmland.
1879 – All New Zealand men aged 21 or over are given the right to vote, regardless of whether they own or rent property.
1907 – A coal mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania, kills 239 workers.
1932 – The BBC Empire Service (forerunner of the World Service) begins broadcasting overseas on shortwave.
1941 – New Zealand’s worst naval loss of life, as Royal Navy cruiser HMS Neptune strikes mines off Libya. Of the 764 who died, 150 were New Zealanders; Adolf Hitler dismisses his chief of staff and takes personal command of the German army after military setbacks.
1950 – The Dalai Lama flees the Tibetan capital Lhasa for a town on the Indian border, as the Chinese invasion continues.
1955 – Carl Perkins records Blue Suede Shoes at Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. 1966 – United Nations General Assembly endorses a draft treaty banning the use of weapons of mass destruction in space.
1972 – Apollo 17 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the last manned mission to the Moon.
1983 – The original Fifa World Cup trophy is stolen from a display case in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, never to be seen again.
1984 – Britain and China sign a joint declaration spelling out the terms for Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.
1997 – Titanic, directed by James Cameron and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, opens in US theatres. It becomes the first film to earn gross takings of US$1 billion.
1998 – The US House of Representatives approves two articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, charging him with lying under oath and obstructing justice.
2006 – A Libyan court convicts five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor and condemns them to death for infecting 400 children with HIV.
2019 – New South Wales announces a sevenday state of emergency amid extreme heat and more than 100 bushfires that have burnt for two months.
Birthdays
Sir Ralph Richardson, UK actor (1902-83); Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet leader (1906-82); Jean Genet, French writer (1910-86); Edith Piaf, French singer (1915-63); Sir Michael Fowler, NZ architect/politician (1929-); Richard Hammond, UK TV presenter (1969-); Ricky Ponting, Australian cricketer (1974-); Jake Gyllenhaal, US actor (1980-).