Today in history
1580 — Spain invades Portugal and keeps it for more than 80 years.
1718 — French immigrants to United States found city of New Orleans in Louisiana.
1883 — Krakatoa volcano erupts in Dutch East Indies, creating a tidal wave that kills 36,000.
1920 — Captain Euan Dickson completes the first air crossing of Cook Strait, flying a 110-hp La Rhone Avros from Christchurch to Upper Hutt.
1921 — The US signs a peace treaty with Germany.
1940 — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are incorporated into the Soviet Union; The British Air Force drops first bombs on Berlin in an overnight raid in WWII.
1941 — British and Soviet troops invade Iran following Shah’s refusal to reduce number of resident Germans.
1942 —The Duke of Kent, youngest brother of King George VI, dies in a plane crash during a WWII mission to Iceland.
1944 — A Free French division, racing from Normandy, liberates Paris from the Germans.
1948 — New Zealand’s deadliest recorded tornado strikes Frankton in Hamilton, killing three, injuring 80 and causing an estimated £1 million damage.
1950 — US President Harry Truman orders the army to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike.
1972 — China casts its first veto in UN Security Council to bar Bangladesh from membership in United Nations.
1997 — Egon Krenz, the East German communist leader who threw open the Berlin Wall eight years earlier, is convicted of manslaughter for the shooting deaths of citizens who tried to flee to the West during the Cold War.
2000 — The Zimbabwe government names another 509 white-owned farms it plans to confiscate for redistribution to landless blacks, bringing to 1542 the number it has targeted under a hastened land seizure programme.
2004 — South African police arrest Mark Thatcher, the son of Margaret Thatcher, on suspicion of involvement in a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea. Thatcher later pleads guilty and avoids jail in a deal with prosecutors.
2009 — The last of the Kennedys, who fascinated the US with their ambition, style, idealism, tragedies — and sometimes sheer recklessness — Edward Moore Kennedy dies at 77. ‘‘Ted’’ was a senator for 47 years.
Today’s Birthdays: Ivan IV (The Terrible), first tsar of Russia (1530-1584); Erich Honecker, East German leader (1912-1994); Sean Connery, British actor (1930-); Elvis Costello, British singer-songwriter (1954-); Bill Ray Cyrus, US singer (1961-).