Today in History

303 - Emperor Diocletian issues the first official Roman edict for the persecution of Christians.

1582 - Pope Gregory XIII announces the New Style (Gregorian) calendar.

1809 – London's Drury Lane Theatre burns to the ground, leaving its owner, Irish writer and politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan, destitute.

1868 – Andrew Johnson becomes the first President of the United States to be impeached by the United States House of Representatives. He is later acquitted in the Senate.

1875 – The SS Gothenburg hits the Great Barrier Reef and sinks off the Australian east coast, killing about 100 people, including a number of high-profile civil servants and dignitaries.

1902 - End of the battle of Langverwacht Hill, in which 23 New Zealand troops die, during South Africa's Boer War.

1912 - The SS Earnslaw is launched on Lake Wakatipu.

1917 - The US ambassador to the United Kingdom, Walter Hines Page, is given the Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany pledges to ensure the return of New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona to Mexico if Mexico declares war on the United States.

1920 - Nancy Astor becomes the first woman to speak in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom following her election as an MP three months earlier..

1946 - Juan Peron elected president of Argentina for the first time.

1949 – The Armistice Agreements are signed, to formally end the hostilities of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

1968 - Tet Offensive halted, when US and South Vietnamese troops recapture Hue from communist forces.

1981 - Buckingham Palace announces engagement of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

1983 – A special commission of the United

States Congress condemns the Japanese American internment during World War II.

1989 - A cargo door of a United Airlines plane blows out on a flight from Los Angeles to Sydney. Nine passengers are killed, including New Zealander Lee Campbell.

1991 - Allied forces launch a ground offensive against Iraqi forces in Kuwait and Iraq.

2016 - Independent report into the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 points the finger directly at the Russian government.

2020 - US film producer Harvey Weinstein, whose career ended amid numerous allegations of sexual harassment and assault, is convicted of rape.

2022 - Russia invades Ukraine, citing among reasons that its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and other government officials are neo-Nazis.

Birthdays

Charles V, Holy Roman emperor (1500-58); Wilhelm Grimm, German author (1786-1859); Julius Vogel, NZ premier (1835-99); Ettie Rout, NZ writer, safe-sex campaigner (18771936); Phil Knight, US businessman (Nike) (1938-); Ann Hercus, NZ politician (1942-); Steve Jobs, US computer pioneer (1955-2011); Judith Collins, NZ politician (1959-); Floyd Mayweather, US boxer (1977-).