Today in History

1791 – The first vineyard in the colony of New South Wales is planted at Parramatta.

1837 – Details of the first practical shorthand system, designed by Isaac Pitman, are published.

1861 – Dunedin becomes the first New Zealand centre with a daily newspaper on publication of the first issue of the Otago Daily Times.

1904 – American inventor King Camp Gillette is granted a US patent for the first razor with disposable blades.

1920 – The League of Nations holds its first meeting, in Geneva.

1923 – Rampant inflation in Germany reaches a peak, its currency standing at four trillion marks to the US dollar.

1956 – Elvis Presley, right, makes his movie debut in Love Me Tender.

1989 – Sachin Tendulkar makes his test cricket debut for India, aged 16.

1990 – Nato and Warsaw Pact nations agree in principle to slash stocks of conventional weapons.

2001 – Microsoft releases the video game console system, Xbox.

2007 – Cyclone Sidr lashes the southwestern coast of Bangladesh with 240kph winds killing at least 3100 people.

2012 – Oil giant BP agrees to plead guilty to a raft of criminal charges and pay a record US$4.5 billion in settlement for the deadly 2010 disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

2017 – Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Salvator Mundi sells for US$450.3 million at auction in New York, a world record for an artwork.

2018 – David Hockney’s Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) sells for US$90.3 million in New York, at the time a record for a living artist.

Birthdays

Georgia O’Keeffe, US artist (1887-1986); Stewie Dempster, NZ cricketer (1903-74); Sir Wallace (Bill) Rowling, NZ politician (1927-95); Ed Asner, US actor (1929-2021); JG Ballard, UK author (1930-2009); Petula Clark, UK singer (1932-); Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Norwegianborn singer in Abba (1945-).