Today in History
1471 – England’s King Henry VI is murdered on orders from the future Edward IV.
1541 – Spaniards on a gold-seeking expedition, led by Hernando de Soto, become the first Europeans to see the Mississippi River.
1542 – De Soto dies while searching for gold along the Mississippi.
1792 – Mt Unzen in Japan erupts, creating a tsunami and killing about 15,000 people.
1840 – William Hobson declares British sovereignty over the whole of New Zealand – the North Island on the basis of cession through the Treaty of Waitangi, and South and Stewart Islands by right of discovery.
1927 – US aviator Charles Lindbergh lands in Paris, completing the first solo flight across the Atlantic. It took him more than 33 hours.
1932 – Amelia Earhart, left, repeats Lindbergh’s feat, the first woman to do so, landing in Northern Ireland, about 15 hours after leaving Newfoundland.
1945 – Film stars Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart are married.
1955 – Chuck Berry records his first single, Maybellene, at Chess Records in Chicago. It was released in July, hitting No 1 on the R&B chart. 1972 – Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta, on display at the Vatican, is damaged by a hammer-wielding man who shouts that he is Jesus Christ.
1981 – Francois Mitterrand takes office as the first leftist president of France’s fifth republic.
1989 – Students occupying Tiananmen Square in Beijing reject government ultimatum to leave.
1991 – Rajiv Gandhi, candidate for prime minister of India, is assassinated by Sri Lankan separatists in a suicide bomb attack.
1998 – After weeks of protests and riots, Indonesian president Suharto resigns, ending a 32-year reign.
2000 – UK actor John Gielgud dies, aged 96; romance novelist Barbara Cartland dies, aged 98.
2009 – The Gurkhas, Nepalese soldiers who have served in the British military for two centuries, win automatic right to settle in Britain, after years of lobbying.
2021 – US prison authorities say two staff supposed to be guarding sex offender Jeffrey Epstein the night he killed himself in a New York jail had admitted they falsified records, but they would be spared prison time under a deal with prosecutors. The pair were accused of sleeping and browsing the internet instead of monitoring Epstein.
Birthdays
Albrecht Duerer, German artist (1471-1528); Philip II, king of Spain (1527-98); Alexander Pope, UK poet (1688-1744); Henri Rousseau, French painter (1844-1910); Andrey Sakharov, Russian physicist (1921-89); Malcolm Fraser, Australian politician (1930-2015); Leo Sayer, UK singer (1948-); Mr T, US actor (1952-); Robbie Magavisa, NZ actor (1972-); Anika Moa, NZ musician (1980-); Ma’a Nonu, All Black (1982-).