Today in History

1104 – The Seljuq Turks capture Baldwin of Bourg, First Crusade leader. He is ransomed in 1108 and later becomes king of Jerusalem.

1663 – Opening of London’s Drury Lane Theatre, the oldest English theatre still in use.

1824 – Premiere in Vienna of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

1846 – Sixty people, including the paramount chief of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, die in a landslide at Te Rapa, on Lake Taupō.

1856 – Henry Sewell becomes the first premier of New Zealand.

1867 – Alfred Nobel patents dynamite. 1888 – Anti-Chinese hysteria in Dunedin sees a public meeting call for a ban on Chinese immigrants.

1915 – Nearly 1200 people die when a German torpedo sinks British liner Lusitania off the Irish coast.

1928 – the minimum voting age for British women is lowered from 30 to 21 — the same age as men.

1939 – Germany and Italy announce a military and political alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.

1941 – Glenn Miller, left, and His Orchestra record Chattanooga Choo Choo.

1945 – Germany signs an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, ending World War II in Europe.

1954 – Vietnamese forces overrun Dien Bien Phu, held by the French. A resulting ceasefire divides the country into North and South.

1975 – US President Gerald Ford declares an end to the ‘‘Vietnam era’’. Viet Cong celebrate takeover of Ho Chi Minh City.

1994 – Edvard Munch’s The Scream is recovered by Norwegian police, almost three months after it was stolen from a museum in Oslo. 2009 – Gunman Jan Molenaar holes up in his Napier home after shooting three policemen and another man.

2015 – Britain’s Conservative Party, under David Cameron, wins a general election with an outright majority.

2017 – Emmanuel Macron wins France’s presidential election, defeating far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

2020 – Authorities in the US state of Georgia arrest a white father and son and charge them with murder after the February shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man they had pursued in a truck after spotting him jogging in their neighbourhood.

2021 – A federal grand jury indicts four former Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd’s arrest and death.