Today in History

1520 – Martin Luther publicly burns the Papal Bull excommunicating him from Roman Catholic Church.

1848 – Louis Napoleon is elected president of France by a huge majority of over 4 million votes.

1868 – The world’s first traffic lights begin operation off London’s Parliament Square.

1896 – Alfred Nobel, Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite, dies. He used his wealth to found the Nobel prizes.

1908 – Ernest Rutherford, left, wins Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

1936 – King Edward VIII of Britain abdicates with the intention of marrying Wallis Simpson.

1948 – United Nations General Assembly in Paris adopts Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Six members of the Soviet bloc, Saudi Arabia and South Africa abstain.

1962 – New Zealand-born Maurice Wilkins wins Nobel Prize for Physiology with colleagues James Watson and Francis Crick.

1967 – US singer Otis Redding is killed in a plane crash in Wisconsin.

1996 – South African President Nelson Mandela signs a constitution guaranteeing equal rights to all races.

1999 – Georgina Beyer becomes the world’s first transgender woman to be elected an MP, winning Wairarapa for Labour.

2006 – Former Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet dies aged 91.

2015 – Volkswagen executives admit cheating over diesel emissions was the result of failures within the company, rather than just the actions of rogue engineers.