Today in History

1868 – Guerrilla and religious leader Te Kooti leads a raid on Matawhero, in Poverty Bay, killing 60 in a revenge (utu) attack for indignities he suffered after being taken prisoner three years earlier.

1871 – Henry Stanley greets David Livingstone, the fellow explorer searching for the source of the Nile, with the famous words ‘‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’’

1880 – Scottish-born Donald

Sutherland, seeking a viable route between Milford Sound and Lake Wakatipu, becomes the first European to see the 580-metre falls that now bear his name.

1885 – The son of German engineer Gottlieb Daimler rides his father’s invention, the first internal combustion engine motorcycle. 1903 – Mary Anderson, of Alabama, is granted a patent for car windscreen wipers. She never profited from it.

1928 – The first instalment of Erich Maria Remarque’s World War I novel

All Quiet on the Western Front is published in a German magazine. 1960 – The first run of 200,000 uncensored copies of DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover sells out within minutes in Britain.

1969 – Sesame Street, left, debuts on US television.

1982 – Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union for 18 years, dies of a heart attack while in office.

2001 – After 15 years of negotiations, China’s membership in the World Trade Organisation is approved. 2007 – US novelist and journalist Norman Mailer dies at age 84.

Birthdays

Martin Luther, German religious reformer (1483-1546); William Hogarth, English artist (1697-1764); Patrick Jameson, NZ WWII pilot (1912-96); Richard Burton, UK actor (1925-84); Ennio Morricone, Italian composer (1928-2020); Don Clarke, All Black (1933-2002); Marilyn Duckworth, NZ writer (1935-); Neil Gaiman, UK writer (1960-); Brendon Hartley, NZ racing driver (1989-).