Today in History

1421 – A storm in the North Sea batters the European coastline. About 10,000 people in what is now the Netherlands die in the resulting floods.

1558 – Elizabeth I becomes Queen of England on the death of her half-sister Mary I.

1603 – Sir Walter Raleigh’s trial for treason begins. He is convicted, but James I spares his life.

1734 – John Peter Zenger, publisher of the New York Weekly Journal, is arrested for libel. He is acquitted, establishing the precedent that truth, however defamatory, is a defence against libel charges.

1800 – US Congress holds its first session in the partially completed Capitol building in Washington DC.

1869 – Suez Canal opens, linking the Mediterranean and Red Sea.

1917 – French sculptor Auguste Rodin dies in Meudon, aged 77.

1925 – New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition opens in Dunedin. More than 3.2 million people