Today in History

322 BC - Reputed date for the death of Greek philosopher Aristotle, aged 62.

321 - Roman Emperor Constantine I decrees that the dies Solis (sun day) is the day of rest in the Empire.

1530 - The Pope denies King Henry VIII’s request for a divorce from Catherine of Aragon.

1842 - Maketu Wharetotara, 17, son of a Ngapuhi chief, becomes the first person to be officially executed in New Zealand, for the murders of five people in the Bay of Islands.

1876 - Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for his telephone.

1933 - The game of Monopoly is created.

1936 - Nazi Germany breaks conditions of the Treaty of Versailles by sending troops to the Rhineland.

1965 - A march by civil rights demonstrators is violently broken up in Selma, Alabama, by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse.

1981 - Disneyland is the scene of a murder for the first time when an 18-year-old is stabbed to death.

1988 - Cyclone Bola hits the East Coast and Hawke’s Bay, killing three people, damaging houses and sweeping away bridges and roads.

1999 - Death of film director Stanley Kubrick.

2005 - A fire set by rioting gang members kills 134 inmates of a jail in the Dominican Republic. 2006 - A series of bombings rock Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city, killing 20 and injuring dozens.

2010 - Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win a best director Oscar, for The Hurt Locker.

Birthdays

Wi Pere, NZ politician (1837-1915); Piet Mondrian, Dutch artist (1872-1944); Maurice Ravel, French composer (1875-1937); Viv Richards, Antiguan cricketer (1952-); Rik Mayall, UK actor (1958-2014); Ivan Lendl, Czech tennis player (1960-); Rachel Weisz, UK actor (1971-); Nicola Willis, NZ politician (1981-).