Today in History

1190 – Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa drowns trying to cross the Saleph River on the Third Crusade.

1752 – Benjamin Franklin flies a kite during a thunderstorm and collects a charge in a Leyden jar when the kite is struck by lightning.

1793 – First public zoo, the Jardin des Plantes, opens in Paris.

1886 – Mt Tarawera erupts, destroying the Pink and White

Terraces and killing about 120 people, mostly Ma¯ori.

1906 – Death of Richard John Seddon, left, prime minister of New Zealand since 1893.

1917 – Sinn Fein riots break out in Dublin.

1935 – In New York City, two recovering alcoholics found Alcoholics Anonymous, a 12-step programme that eventually helps countless people cope with alcoholism.

1943 – Hungarian journalist Laszlo Biro patents his ballpoint pen. 1997 – Top Khmer Rouge lieutenant Son Sen and his family are executed on the orders of leader Pol Pot.

2003 – Former hostage Terry Waite, 64, who was chained to a wall in Beirut for nearly five years, agrees to spend a day in a British prison to raise money for charity.

2016 – Mourners line the streets of Muhammad Ali’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, to farewell the boxing great who died the week before, aged 74.

2020 – Swedish prosecutors close the file on the murder of prime minister Olof Palme in 1986, saying the probable killer is dead.

Birthdays

Gustave Courbet, French artist (1819-77); Nikolaus August Otto, German developer of internal combustion engine (1832-91); Inia Te Wiata, NZ opera singer (1915-71); Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021); Maurice Sendak, US author (1928-2012); Scott McLaughlin, NZ racing driver (1993-).