Today in History

1824 – New South Wales is constituted a Crown colony.

1863 – French protectorate over Cambodia is established.

1919 – Germany adopts the Weimar Constitution, creating its first parliamentary democracy.

1934 – The first civilian prisoners are transferred to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.

1943 – German forces begin the evacuation of Sicily as Allies advance.

1956 – US painter Jackson Pollock dies in a car crash, aged 44.

1960 – Chad becomes independent of France.

1962 – Wellington-Picton ferry Aramoana enters service. It’s the first in New Zealand to allow cars and rail wagons to drive on and off the ship.

1965 – Riots break out in the Watts neighbourhood of Los Angeles after two white policemen scuffle with a black motorist. Thirty-four people die as a result.

1984 – New Zealand’s Ian Ferguson, left, wins his third canoeing gold medal of the Los Angeles Olympics.

2000 – A Hungarian prisoner deposited in a Russian psychiatric hospital in 1945 and then forgotten about returns home.

2008 – The website Airbedand breakfast.com is formally launched, becoming Airbnb in 2009.

2010 – Researchers say two ancient animal bones from Ethiopia show signs of butchering by humans, moving back the earliest evidence for the use of stone tools by about 800,000 years. 2014 – Actor Robin Williams dies, aged 63.

Birthdays

Nurse Maude, NZ nursing pioneer (1862-1935); Enid Blyton, UK author (1897-1968); Alex Haley, US author (1921-92); Ralph Hotere, NZ artist (1931-2013); Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani president (1943-); Steve Wozniak, US co-founder of Apple (1950-); Ruth Dyson, NZ politician (1957-); Chris Hemsworth, Australian actor (1983-); Anton Cooper, NZ mountain biker (1994-).