Today in History

1625 - Death of King James I, the first Stuart king of England and the first to rule both England and Scotland.

1703 - Russia’s Tsar Peter the Great founds St Petersburg.

1899 - The first international radio transmission is sent when inventor Guglielmo Marconi sends a wireless message from England to France.

1968 - Yuri Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut who flew the world’s first manned space mission, is killed in the crash of a training plane.

1977 - In the deadliest crash in aviation history, two Boeing 747s, owned by KLM and Pan-Am, collide and burst into flames on runway in Canary Islands, killing 583 people.

1980 - Some 147 people die when the Alexander Kielland, a floating platform for offduty oil workers, capsizes in the North Sea.

1991 - Commandos storm a jetliner in Singapore with 120 passengers aboard, killing four Pakistani hijackers after a nine-hour standoff.

1994 - Silvio Berlusconi seizes victory in Italy’s general elections.

1996 - Jewish extremist Yigal Amir receives a life sentence for assassinating Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995.

1998 - The United States Food and Drug Administration approves the drug Viagra.

2014 - The world rushes to help Ukraine, with the International Monetary Fund pledging up to US$18 billion, the United Nations condemning the vote that drove Crimea into Russian hands and the US Congress backing even harsher sanctions against Moscow. 2020 - UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announces he has contracted Covid-19.

Birthdays

John Ballance, 14th New Zealand Prime Minister (1839-1893); Frederick Henry Royce, English auto engineer (1863-1933); Quentin Tarantino, US film director (1963-); Mariah Carey, US singer (1970-); David Coulthard, Scottish Formula One driver (1971-); Ben Franks, New Zealand rugby union player (1984-); Kimbra, New Zealand singer (1990-).