Today in History

1607 – The first permanent English settlement in North America is founded at Jamestown, Virginia.

1643 – Louis XIV becomes king of France at the age of 4.

1787 – Delegates gather in Philadelphia to draw up a constitution for a new form of American government.

1796 – UK doctor Edward Jenner administers the world’s first vaccination, inoculating an 8-year-old boy against smallpox.

1866 – The General Grant, sailing from Melbourne to London, hits cliffs on the west coast of the main island in the subantarctic

Auckland Islands. Of the 83 people on board, 15 make it ashore as castaways. Ten survivors are rescued 18 months later.

1870 – First game of rugby played in New Zealand, at Nelson.

1907 – Dr Frederic Truby King helps to form the Society for the Promotion of the Health of Women and Children, later known as the Plunket Society.

1940 – The aerial bombardment of Rotterdam kills nearly 900 people; 85,000 are left homeless. The Netherlands formally surrenders a day later.

1941 – New Zealand minesweeper Puriri is sunk by a German mine at the entrance to Hauraki Gulf. Five crew members die.

1948 – State of Israel is proclaimed. The US recognises it immediately.

1955 – Representatives from eight Communist bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, sign the Warsaw Pact in Poland. 1961 – US civil rights activists known as Freedom Riders are attacked by mobs in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama.

1973 – The US launches Skylab 1, its first manned space station.

1991 – South African anti-apartheid activist Winnie Mandela, left, is jailed for six years for complicity in the kidnapping and beating of four youths, one of whom died. She is freed pending appeal.

1998 – Singer and actor Frank Sinatra dies, aged 82.

2000 – Tens of thousands attend the ‘‘Million Mom March’’ in Washington for stricter US gun control.

2008 – The US Interior Department declares the polar bear a threatened species because of the loss of Arctic sea ice.

2011 – Dominique Strauss-Kahn, French head of the International Monetary Fund, is removed from a Paris-bound plane in New

York and charged with the sexual assault of a Manhattan hotel maid.

Birthdays

Thomas Gainsborough, UK artist (1727-88); Alice Copping, NZ nutritionist (1906-96); Eric Morecambe, UK comedian (1926-84); George Lucas, US director (1944-); David Byrne, US musician (1952-); Robert Zemeckis, US director (1952-); Frank Nobilo, NZ golfer (1960-); Tim Roth, UK actor (1961-); Cate Blanchett, Australian actor (1969-); Martine McCutcheon, UK actor/singer (1976-); Mark Zuckerberg, US founder of Facebook (1984-).