Today in History
1014 – Irish king Brian Boru is killed, possibly by retreating Vikings after his forces defeated them at the Battle of Clontaf.
1915 – Poet-soldier Rupert Brooke dies in Greece.
1968 – First decimal coins, the 5p and 10p pieces, are introduced in Britain.
1969 – Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to death for assassinating Robert F Kennedy. The sentence is later reduced to life imprisonment.
1975 – South Vietnam’s cabinet resigns as panic grips Saigon and US President Gerald Ford declares the Vietnam War is over.
1979 – New Zealander Blair Peach, a specialneeds teacher and member of the Anti-Nazi League, dies during a clash with police at an anti-fascism rally in London.
1983 – Prince William, left, is photographed with a buzzy bee toy during a royal tour of New Zealand.
1984 – The Aids virus is identified as HTLV-III. 1985 – The Coca-Cola Company introduces New Coke; a public backlash forces it to bring back ‘‘Coca-Cola Classic’’ less than three months later.
1988 – A federal ban on smoking during domestic US airline flights of two hours or less comes into effect.
1992 – McDonald’s opens its first restaurant in Beijing.
1992 – South African President FWde Klerk proposes holding a multiracial election.
1998 – Death of James Earl Ray, who confessed to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr in 1968 and later insisted he was framed.
2003 – Beijing closes all schools for two weeks because of an outbreak of the Sars virus. 2005 – The recently created video-sharing website YouTube uploaded its first clip, Me at the Zoo, which showed co-founder Jawed Karim standing in front of an elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo.
2007 – Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first freely elected president, dies in Moscow, aged 76.
2013 – West Indian cricketer Chris Gayle hits the fastest century in any form of cricket, off 30 balls.
2018 – A van is driven into pedestrians in Toronto, Canada, killing 10. A further victim dies of her injuries three years later.
2020 – US President Donald Trump suggests at a White House briefing that Covid-19 might be treated by injecting disinfectant.
Birthdays
William Shakespeare, English playwright (1564-1616); JMW Turner, UK artist (1775-1851); James Buchanan, US president (1791-1868); Max Planck, German physicist (1858-1947); Ngaio Marsh, NZ writer (1895-1982); Shirley Temple Black, US diplomat/actor (1928-2014); Roy Orbison, US musician (1936-88); Ruud Kleinpaste, Dutch/NZ naturalist (1952-); Michael Moore, US director (1954-); Brendan Cole, NZ dancer (1976-); Luke Ronchi, NZ/ Australian cricketer/coach (1981-); Dev Patel, UK actor (1990-); Ashleigh Barty, Australian tennis player (1996-).