Today in History

1527 – Florence becomes a republic. 1532 – Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro lands with a small band of soldiers on the northern coast of Peru.

1568 – Mary Queen of Scots, right, flees to

England.

1717 – Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, is imprisoned in the Bastille for nearly a year, after satirical attacks on the government.

1763 – Samuel Johnson meets future biographer James Boswell.

1846 – Eight settlers are killed in a Nga¯ti Toa attack on Boulcott Farm, in the Hutt Valley.

1868 – US Senate votes against impeaching President Andrew Johnson and acquits him of committing ‘‘high crimes and misdemeanours’’.

1920 – Joan of Arc is canonised in Rome. 1929 – The first Academy Awards are presented during a banquet in Hollywood.

1943 – Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto ends; the Dambusters raids begin on the Moehne and Eder dams in the Ruhr valley with bouncing bombs.

1948 – Chaim Weizmann is elected first president of Israel.

1956 – England spin bowler Jim Laker takes all 10 Australian first-innings wickets for just 88 runs, playing for Surrey in a tour match at The Oval, London.

1975 – Japanese climber Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mt Everest.

1966 – The Beach Boys release their groundbreaking album Pet Sounds, though initial reviews were lukewarm.

1981 – The All Whites football team beat Australia 2-0 in Sydney – a defining moment in their successful qualifying campaign for the 1982 World Cup finals.

1985 – Three scientists from the British

Antarctic Survey announce in the journal Nature their detection of abnormally low levels of ozone over the South Pole.

1988 – US Surgeon General C Everett Koop reports that nicotine is as addictive as heroin.

1989 – Hundreds of thousands arrive in Beijing to support hunger strikers in Tiananmen Square.

1995 – Japanese police arrest cult leader Shoko Asahara after a nerve-gas attack killed 12 on Tokyo’s subways two months earlier.

2005 – Kuwait permits women’s suffrage in a 35-23 National Assembly vote.

2007 – Nicolas Sarkozy becomes the 23rd president of France.

2019 – UK talk show The Jeremy Kyle Show is axed by ITV after a guest dies.

Birthdays

Maria Agnesi, Italian mathematician (1718-99); HE Bates, UK author (1905-74); Henry Fonda, US actor (1905-82); Woody Herman, US jazz musician (1913-87); Liberace, US pianist (1919-87); Pierce Brosnan, actor (1953-); Krist Novoselic, US musician (1965-); Janet Jackson, US pop singer (1966-); Melanie Lynskey, NZ actor (1977-); Thomas BrodieSangster, UK actor (1990-).