Today in History

4977BC – The universe is created, according to German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered a founder of modern science.

1509 – Pope Julius II excommunicates the Italian state of Venice.

1521 – Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan is killed in the Philippines.

1773 – British parliament passes unpopular Tea Act, to save faltering East India Company.

1806 – Moehanga of Nga¯puhi becomes first recorded Ma¯ori visitor to England.

1893 – Death of NZ Premier John Ballance, right.

1904 – Australian Labor Party becomes the first Labour government in the world.

1950 – Australian Prime Minister Robertmenzies introduces a bill to outlaw the Communist Party.

1976 – First Vietnamese refugee boatpeople arrive in Darwin.

1994 – South Africa holds its first multiracial elections.

2000 – Palaeontologists unveil a 2-million-year-old skull of a female Paranthropus robustus, a cousin of early man. The fossil was found in South Africa.

2005 – The superjumbo jet aircraft Airbus A380 makes its first flight from Toulouse, France.

2010 – Ratings agency Standard and Poor’s pushes Greece to the brink of a financial abyss and downgrades Portugal’s debt, fuelling fears of a Europe-wide debt meltdown.

2016 – Seoul says the number of North Korean defectors arriving in South Korea has halved since Kim Jong Un came to power.

Birthdays

Mary Wollstonecraft, UK author (1759-97); Samuel Morse, US inventor (1791-1872); General Ulysses S Grant, US president (1822-1885); Coretta Scott King, US civil rights activist (1927-2006); Erik Thomson, Australian actor (1967-); Darcey Bussell, English ballet dancer (1969-); Hamish Rutherford, NZ cricketer (1989-); Nick Kyrgios, Australian tennis player (1995-).