TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2017

On this day in history:

1840 - New Zealand becomes a separate colony, no longer administered by New South Wales.

1855 - Missionary and explorer David Livingstone becomes the first non-African to sight Victoria Falls in Africa. [ 1915 - Coca-Cola had its prototype for a contoured bottle patented. The bottle made its commercial debut the next year.

1919 - The first south to north transcontinental flight across Australia occurs.

1920 - Australian airline Qantas is founded.

1938 - The Waterside Workers’ Strike, which earns Robert Menzies the nickname of ‘Pig-Iron Bob’, begins.

1940 - Holocaust: In occupied Poland, the Nazis close off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world.

1944 - World War II: Düren, Germany, is destroyed by Allied bombers.

1945 - UNESCO is founded. 1959 - The original Broadway production of The Sound of Music opens.

1988 - Estonia’s parliament declared that the Baltic republic “sovereign,” but stopped short of complete independence.

1989 - El Salvadoran army troops kills six Jesuit priests and two others at Jose Simeon Canas University.

1990 - Pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the Girl You Know It’s True album. Session musicians had provided all the vocals.

1992 - The Hoxne Hoard is discovered by metal detectorist Eric Lawes in Hoxne, Suffolk.

1997 - China released Wei Jingsheng, a pro-democracy dissident from jail for medical reasons. He had been incarcerated for almost 18 years.

2001 - The movie Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone opened in the US and UK.