Today in History

1035 – Death of Canute, or Cnut, king of England, Denmark and Norway.

1859 – The first flying trapeze act is performed in Paris by Jules Leotard without a safety net. The bodyhugging costume he used was later named after him.

1864 – General William Sherman orders the destruction of the business district of Atlanta, Georgia, before embarking on his famous March to the Sea.

1912 – A search party in Antarctica finds the remains of British explorer Captain Robert Scott and his companions. In New Zealand, striking goldminer Fred Evans is seriously injured in a clash involving police and strikebreakers in Waihi. He dies the following day.

1927 – Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, paving the way for Joseph Stalin to consolidate power.

1930 – The first Round Table Conference, called by the British government to consider the future constitution of India, opens in London.

1931 – Abbey Road Studios, later made famous by the Beatles, who recorded most of their albums there, opens in London.

1954 – The Ellis Island immigration centre, in New York harbour, closes after processing more than 12m people since opening in 1892. 1968 – US Supreme Court rules that Arkansas’ ban on the teaching of evolution in public schools is unconstitutional.

1970 – The Bhola cyclone strikes East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) killing at least 300,000, as a storm surge floods low-lying islands of the Ganges Delta.

1974 – South Africa is suspended from the UN General Assembly over its racial policies.

1980 – The US space probe Voyager 1 reaches the planet Saturn.

1982 – Yuri Andropov is elected general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee, after the death of Leonid Brezhnev.

1985 – New Zealand beat Australia in a test match in Brisbane. Richard Hadlee ends with match figures of 15-123, still a national record. 2019 – Venice has its worst flooding in more than 50 years, with water reaching almost 1.9 metres above average sea level.

2020 – The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a broad coalition of US government and industry officials, rejects President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud, saying the presidential election was ‘‘the most secure in American history’’. 2021 – A judge in Los Angeles ends the conservatorship that controlled the life and money of pop star Britney Spears, left, for nearly 14 years.

Birthdays

Auguste Rodin, French sculptor (1840-1917); Princess Grace of Monaco (1929-82); Helen Thayer, NZ-born explorer (1937-); Jenny McLeod, NZ composer (1941-); Neil Young, Canadian musician (1945-); Nadia Comaneci, Romanian gymnast (1961-); Tonya Harding, US skater (1970-); Ryan Gosling, Canadian actor (1980-); Anne Hathaway, US actor (1982-).