Today in History
1530 – Cardinal Wolsey is arrested as a traitor, for trying to thwart Henry VIII’s plans to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
1605 – Guy Fawkes takes up his post in the cellars under England’s Parliament, preparing to blow it up. 1854 – Florence Nightingale and a team of 38 nurses arrive in Turkey to set up a hospital to treat injured soldiers from the Crimean War. 1862 – First rapid-fire machinegun is patented by Richard Jordan Gatling. 1918 – NZ Division liberates Le Quesnoy, in France, during World War I; English poet and soldier Wilfred Owen is killed in action in France, aged 25.
1922 – The entrance to King Tutankhamen’s tomb is discovered. 1930 – Phar Lap wins the Melbourne Cup.
1946 – United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) is formed.
1956 – Soviet tanks and troops put a brutal end to a 12-day uprising in
Hungary.
1958 – Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli is crowned as Pope John XXIII.
1979 – Militant students storm the United States embassy in Tehran and take 90 hostages.
1995 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is shot dead in Tel Aviv.
2008 – Barack Obama is elected America’s first black president.
2016 – The Paris Agreement to reduce international carbon emissions comes into effect.
2017 – Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri quits in a TV broadcast from Saudi Arabia, amid concerns he is being forcibly detained.
Birthdays
Walter Cronkite, US newsman (1916-2009); Ray Columbus, NZ singer (1942-2016); Rod Marsh, Australian cricketer (1947-2022); Tony Abbott, Australian politician (1957-); Matthew McConaughey, US actor (1969-); Sean ‘‘Puff Daddy’’ Combs, US rapper (1969-); Troy Flavell, All Black (1976-); Jerry Collins, All Black (1980-2015); Megan Woods, NZ politician (1973-).