Today in History

1639 - Cambridge College, Massachusetts, is renamed Harvard for clergyman John Harvard.

1781 - German-born English astronomer William Hershel discovers Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun.

1868 - The first impeachment trial of a US president, Andrew Johnson, begins in the Senate. Two subsequent votes were held; both failed by one vote to reach the twothirds majority needed to convict him.

1884 - Using Greenwich, in London, as the point from which all time is measured, an international time standard is adopted across the United States.

1930 - The Lowell Observatory in Arizona announces that astronomer Clyde Tombaugh has discovered a ninth planet, later named Pluto, and downgraded to a dwarf planet in 2006.

1956 - New Zealand wins its first cricket test, against the West Indies in Auckland, after 22 losses and 22 draws over the preceding 26 years.

1996 - A gunman in Dunblane, Scotland, shoots to death 16 children and a teacher at the town’s primary school. Survivors include future tennis star Andy Murray, then 8, and his brother Jamie.

2019 - The US Federal Aviation Authority grounds all Boeing 737 Max aircraft after the plane type’s second crash in Ethiopia three days earlier.

2020 - Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black emergency medical technician, is shot and killed by police in her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, after officers burst through her door with a battering ram.

Birthdays

Sir Hugh Walpole, NZ-born novelist (18841941); L Ron Hubbard, US founder of Scientology (1911-86); Dame Sian Elias, former NZ chief justice (1949-); Adam Clayton, Irish musician, U2 (1960-); Neil Wagner, South African-born NZ cricketer (1986-); Jack Harlow, US rapper (1998-); Coco Gauff, US tennis player (2004-).