Today in History

1864 - Arthur Dobson and his brothers become the first Europeans to “discover” Arthur’s Pass, though it had long been known to Māori.

1894 - Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time.

1930 - Mahatma Gandhi opens civil disobedience campaign in India against the British.

1988 - South African government bans church-led opposition group headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as a “threat to public safety”.

2000 - Pope John Paul II asks forgiveness for past sins of his Church, including its treatment of Jews, heretics and women.

2001 - A US Navy jet mistakenly drops a bomb on a group of military personnel at a bombing range in Kuwait, killing five Americans and a New Zealander.

2003 - The World Health Organisation issues a worldwide alert about an illness it later calls severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) that has struck hundreds of people in China, Hong Kong, and Vietnam.

2009 - Disgraced US financier Bernard Madoff pleads guilty to perpetrating one of Wall Street’s biggest swindles. He is later sentenced to 150 years in jail, where he died in 2021.

2011 - The first reactor at Fukushima nuclear power plant melts and explodes, a day after a large earthquake and tsunami in Japan. 2021 - The city of Minneapolis agrees to pay $27 million to settle a civil lawsuit from George Floyd’s family over his death in police custody.

Birthdays

George Forbes, NZ prime minister (18691947); Rita Angus, NZ artist (1908-70); Jack Kerouac, US writer (1922-69); Liza Minnelli, US singer-actress (1946-); Mitt Romney, US politician (1947-); James Taylor, US singer (1948-); Wayne Mapp, NZ politician (1952-).