Today in history
1793 - Holy Roman Empire declares war on France.
1827 - Death of German composer Ludwig van Beethoven.
1828 - Austrian composer Franz Schubert gives his only public concert, in Vienna.
1872 - US inventor Thomas J Martin is awarded a patent for the fire extinguisher.
1896 – Sixty-five coal miners die of gas poisoning after an explosion in the West Coast’s Brunner coal mine, New Zealand’s deadliest industrial accident.
1913 - More than 1400 people die in floods in US states of Ohio, Indiana and Texas.
1942 - Nazi Germany begins sending Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
1945 - The Battle of Iwo Jima ends after about 22,000 Japanese are killed or captured and more than 4500 US troops killed.
1953 - US researcher Dr Jonas E Salk announces new vaccine to immunise against polio.
1992 - Britain’s Prince Andrew and his wife, the former Sarah Ferguson, separate; Former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson sentenced to six years in prison for rape.
1997 - The bodies of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate techno-religious cult are found in a mansion at Rancho Santa Fe, California, after their mass suicide.
1998 - Bill Clinton becomes the first American head of state to visit South Africa.
1999 - Assisted-suicide crusader Dr Jack Kevorkian is convicted in the United States of second-degree murder for fatally injecting a terminally ill man.
2000 - Pope John Paul II crowns his Holy Land sojourn with a gesture to the Jews when he places a plea for forgiveness in a nook in the Western Wall, expressing sorrow over the past errors of his church.
2007 - Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams, leaders of Northern Ireland’s major Protestant and Catholic parties, open face-to-face relations after four decades of conflict and announce a stunning deal to create a powersharing administration.
2013 - A year and a half after being freed from an Italian prison, American Amanda Knox faces the prospect of another trial as Italy’s highest court overturns her acquittal in the gruesome 2007 killing of her British roommate.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Robert Frost, US poet (1874-1963); Tennessee Williams, US playwright (1911-1983); Leonard Nimoy, US actor (1931-2015); Alan Arkin, US actor (1934-); James Caan, US actor (1940-); Bob Woodward, US journalist (1943-); Diana Ross, US singer (1944-); James Iha, US musician of Smashing Pumpkins fame (1968-); Keira Knightley, English actress (1985-).