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SCMP Reporter

In Hong Kong

1961: Nat 'King' Cole, the American singer, arrived at Kai Tak from Manila for a five-day visit. He told reporters he was not a rock 'n' roll singer. 'I am a musician, and a man of musical integrity. Rock 'n' roll is not very musical.'

1962: Writer Ben Lucien Burman arrived in the colony. Known as 'Mr Americana' for his Mark Twain-style writings, he had written such books as Steamboat Around The Bend and The Street Of The Laughing Camel.

1964: A group of 321 White Russian refugees arrived from China on their way to resettlement in Australia and Brazil.

1967: George Randolph Hearst, eldest son of publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, arrived with his wife on holiday. He was the guest of film magnate Sir Run Run Shaw.

1974: The Hang Seng Index experienced its busiest day of trading this year as $191.85 million worth of shares changed hands. The Index closed at 427.93, up 18.80 points.

Around the world

1500: Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Diaz, who discovered the Cape of Good Hope, drowned during a voyage.

1790: Rhode Island became the 13th state of the United States. It was the last of the original colonies to ratify the constitution.

1886: Frenchman Pierre-Albert Raymond invented the first metal snap fastener, or press stud.

1914: The liner Empress of Ireland, carrying 1,477 passengers and crew, collided with the Norwegian freighter Storstadt in the St Lawrence River in Canada. At least 1,012 people died.

1919: The first pop-up electric toaster was patented by American Charles Strite of Minnesota.

1940: In World War II, German forces captured Ostend and Ypres in Belgium and Lille in France.

1942: American actor John Barrymore died. In Rasputin And The Empress, he appeared with his sister Ethel and brother Lionel.

1944: The Block Island, a US aircraft carrier, was sunk by a German submarine near Madeira. It was the only US carrier lost in the Atlantic in World War II.

1953: Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa, reached the summit of Mount Everest, the first team to do so.

1974: Northern Ireland was brought under direct rule from Westminster one day after the collapse of the Northern Ireland executive.

1982: Pope Paul II, in the first papal visit to Britain since 1531, prayed alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England, in Canterbury Cathedral.

1985: Thirty-nine football fans, mostly Italian, were crushed to death in rioting involving Liverpool and Juventus supporters at the European Cup Final at Brussels'Heysel Stadium.

1994: Erich Honecker, ex-East German ruler and supervisor of the creation of the Berlin Wall, died in exile in Chile. He was 81.

1999: Nigeria's elected president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, was sworn in, ending 15 years of military rule.

1999: The US space shuttle Discovery became the first spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station.



Today in history