Today in History

1370 – Building begins on the Bastille fortress in Paris.

1500 – Portuguese navigator Pedro Alvares Cabral is the first European to arrive in Brazil.

1509 – Henry VIII becomes king of England after the death of his father, Henry VII.

1526 – First slave revolt in the American colonies, in South Carolina.

1864 – Congress authorises the use of the phrase ‘‘In God We Trust’’ on US coins, left.

1915 – In the first reported use of gas in war, the German army releases chlorine over French troops at Ypres, Belgium.

1936 – Alliance between Ra¯tana Church and Labour is cemented between Wiremu Ra¯tana and Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage.

1945 – Allied forces take Bologna in Italy during World War II.

1992 – Petrol from a refinery explodes in the sewers of Guadalajara, Mexico, killing 194 people.

1994 – 7000 Tutsis slaughtered by Hutu in a stadium in Rwanda.

1995 – Hutu refugees from Rwanda flee camp in Zaire, after thousands are shot by soldiers or trampled to death in stampedes.

1997 – Peruvian troops storm the Japanese ambassador’s mansion in Lima, and rescue 72 hostages held for four months.

1999 – Nato bombs Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s home in Belgrade.

2013 – A seriously wounded Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is charged in his hospital room with bombing the Boston Marathon.

Birthdays

Isabella, Queen of Castile (1451-1504); Immanuel Kant, German philosopher (1724-1804); Vladimir Lenin, Soviet leader (1870-1924); Vladimir Nabokov, Russian/us novelist (1899-1977); Robert Oppenheimer, US physicist (1904-67); Glen Campbell, US singer (1936-2017); Jack Nicholson, US actor (1937-); Dave Loveridge, All Black (1952-).