Today in History

1858 – Abraham Lincoln warns that America is becoming a ‘‘house divided’’ over the issue of slavery.

1896 – Survivors of a tsunami in Japan find that more than 20,000 friends and family have perished overnight.

1903 – Ford Motor Co is incorporated, and Pepsi-Cola is trademarked.

1904 – ‘‘Bloomsday’’, on which the fictional events in Ulysses ,by James Joyce, take place. The date is marked by celebrations in Dublin and elsewhere.

1911 – IBM’s precursor, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co, is incorporated in New York.

1923 – Illegal abortionist Daniel Cooper is hanged at Terrace Gaol in Wellington after being found guilty of murdering two infants.

1958 – Imre Nagy, a former Hungarian premier and symbol of its 1956 uprising against Soviet rule, is hanged for treason.

1961 – Rudolf Nureyev, star of the Kirov Opera Ballet Company, defects during a stopover in Paris.

1963 – The world’s first female space traveller, Russia’s Valentina Tereshkova, 26, left, is launched into orbit aboard Vostok 6.

1976 – South African police fire on black school students in Soweto, protesting against being taught in Afrikaans. The killings spark months of racial upheaval.

1990 – More than 1000 people are killed in a 7.7-magnitude earthquake in the Philippines.

2015 – Donald Trump launches his campaign for the US presidency. 2016 – British Labour MP Jo Cox is shot and killed outside her constituency surgery in Yorkshire.

Birthdays

Geronimo, Apache Indian leader (1829-1909); Stan Laurel, US actor (1890-1965); Barbara McClintock, US geneticist (1902-92); Dame Kate Harcourt, NZ actor (1927-); Roberto Duran, Panamanian boxer (1951-); Jurgen Klopp, German football coach (1967-); Phil Mickelson, US golfer (1970-); Akira Ioane, All Black (1995-).