Today in History

1629 – Peace of Susa ends war between England and France.

1775 – First American society for abolition of slavery is organised by

Benjamin Franklin, right, and Benjamin Rush.

1828 – First edition of Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language is published.

1865 – US President Abraham Lincoln is shot by actor John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in

Washington, DC, and dies the following morning.

1890 – Delegates to Washington Conference of American States create what is to become the PanAmerican Union; that North, South and Central America are all American nations.

1903 – Dr Harry Plotz discovers vaccine against typhoid.

1910 – US President William Howard Taft throws the first ball to start the major league baseball season.

1912 – Titanic hits iceberg in the

North Atlantic and begins sinking.

1956 – Ampex demonstrates first commercial videotape recorder.

1992 – UN warns Iraq it risks military confrontation by moving missiles to Kurdish areas.

1932 – Unemployed riot in Queen St, Auckland, as part of disturbances in the four main centres in the ‘‘angry autumn’’ that year.

1993 – On International Women’s Day, a Chinese newspaper asks 100 women what they would like to be. Sixty say they want to be men.

2003 – Human Genome Project is completed with 99 per cent of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99 per cent.

Birthdays

Christian Huygens, Dutch scientist (1629-95); Alan MacDiarmid, NZborn chemist, Nobel Prize winner (1927-2007); Loretta Lynn, US singer-songwriter (1932-); Robin Tait, NZ athlete (1940-1984); Peter Capaldi, UK actor (1958-); Robert Carlyle, UK actor (1961-); Adrien Brody, US actor (1973-); Sarah Michelle Gellar, US actress (1977-).