Today in History

1422 – Henry VI becomes king of England at the age of 9 months.

1841 – The Sophia Pate is wrecked on a sandbar at the entrance to Kaipara Harbour; 21 lives are lost.

1888 – Mary Ann Nichols, the first of Jack the Ripper’s victims, is found murdered in east London.

1894 – New Zealand becomes the first country to introduce compulsory arbitration for disputes between employers and unions. 1897 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his movie camera, the Kinetograph. 1925 – Anthropologist Margaret Mead first

arrives in Samoa, forming often controversial views on Pacific attitudes to sex. 1928 – Die Dreigroschenoper (The

Threepenny Opera), by Bertolt Brecht, left, and Kurt Weill, premieres in Berlin.

1939 – Adolf Hitler signs an order to attack Poland; German forces move to the frontier.

1945 – The Liberal Party of Australia is founded by Robert Menzies.

1957 – The Federation of Malaya – forerunner of modern Malaysia – gains independence from Britain.

1962 – Trinidad and Tobago gain independence from Britain.

1968 – West Indian Garfield Sobers, playing for Nottinghamshire, becomes the first cricketer to score six sixes off one over in first-class cricket, in Swansea, Wales.

1974 – New Zealand prime minister Norman Kirk dies suddenly, aged 51.

1980 – The Gdan´sk Agreement is signed, allowing Polish citizens to bring democratic changes within the communist political structure.

1991 – Uzbekistan declares independence from the Soviet Union.

1994 – The Provisional IRA declares an indefinite ceasefire in Northern Ireland. 1997 – Diana, Princess of Wales, dies in a car crash in Paris, along with companion Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul.

2005 – Nearly 1000 people, mostly women and children, either drown or are crushed to death in Baghdad as rumours of a suicide bomber spread panic among Shi’ite pilgrims crossing a bridge over the Tigris River. 2006 – Police in Norway recover the Edvard Munch masterpieces The Scream and Madonna, two years after masked gunmen stole them from an Oslo museum.

2013 – An Indian teenager is the first to be sentenced – to three years in a reform home – after a young woman was fatally raped on a moving New Delhi bus.

Birthdays

Caligula (Gaius Caesar), emperor of Rome (12-41); Commodus, Roman emperor (161-92); Maria Montessori, Italian doctor and educator (1870-1952); Roderick Carr, NZ RAF and Indian air force chief (1891-1971); Sir Bernard Lovell, UK astronomer (1913-2012); Van Morrison, UK musician (1945-); Richard Gere, US actor (1949-); Serge Blanco, French rugby player (1958-); Kieran Crowley, All Black (1961-); Queen Rania of Jordan (1970-).