Today in history

1868 – The Ma¯ori religious leader and guerilla, Te Kooti, leads a raid on the Matawhero settlement in Poverty Bay, killing 60 in a revenge attack for indignities he suffered after being taken prisoner three years earlier. 1885 – The son of German engineer Otto Daimler becomes the first motorcyclist, riding his father’s invention 10 kilometres. 1928 – Hirohito is enthroned as Emperor of Japan. 1987 – Niger’s President Seyni Kountche dies in Paris, France, and is replaced as head of state by army chief Ali Seibou. 1988 – Soldiers open fire and kill at least 15 people in Sri Lanka when anti-government demonstrators defy a curfew. 1991 – Street fighting rages between Serbs and Croats struggling for control of Danube River town of Vukovar. 1992 – UN weapons inspectors in Baghdad remove 200 drums containing uranium from an Iraqi atomic facility. 1998 – A jury in New York City convicts Corey Arthur, 20, of second-degree murder in the 1997 torture and murder of Jonathan Levin, his former highschool English teacher. Levin was the son of Gerald Levin, the chairman of Time Warner Inc. 2000 – Philippine President Joseph Estrada denies new corruption allegations that he received a $20 million kickback from the sale of the country’s largest telephone company and pocketed more than $16m from a controversial stock sale. 2006 – Zimbabwe’s government launches a programme to issue 99-year leases to black farmers allocated land seized mostly from white farmers. 2007 – Six United States troops are killed when insurgents ambush their foot patrol in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan – the most lethal attack against American forces this year, making 2007 the deadliest year for US troops in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion. 2010 – President Barack Obama tells global leaders in Seoul, South Korea, the burden is on them as well as the US to fix trade-stifling imbalances and currency disputes that imperil economic recoveries everywhere.