HOT TOPICS

Quiz

1 What town was the Pied Piper

from?

2 What is the surname of John,

Michael, and Wendy in Peter Pan?

3 What bird is featured on the NZ $5

note?

4 The two most capped Highlanders Super Rugby players have what surname?

5 New Zealand troops have finally withdrawn from which country in late March, after a 20 year deployment?

History

1789 US President-elect George Washington leaves Mt Vernon, Virginia, for his inauguration in New York.

1862 During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signs a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia.

1912 American aviator Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel, leaving Dover, England, and arriving near Calais, France, in 59 minutes.

1945 A Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea torpedoes and sinks the MV Goya, which Germany was using to transport refugees and wounded soldiers; an estimated 7000 die.

1947 The cargo ship Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate, blows up in the harbour in Texas City, Texas; a nearby ship, the High Flyer, carrying ammonium nitrate and sulfur, catches fire and explodes the next day; the blasts and fires kill nearly 600 people.

1962 Bob Dylan debuts his song Blowin’ in the Wind at Gerde’s Folk City in New York.

1963 Martin Luther King Jr writes his Letter from Birmingham Jail in he responds to local clergymen who criticise him for leading street protests; King defends his tactics, writing, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

1972 Apollo 16 blasts off on a voyage to the Moon with astronauts John W Young, Charles M Duke Jr and Ken Mattingly on board.

1977 Alex Haley, author of the bestseller Roots, visits the Gambian village of Juffure, where, he believes, his ancestor Kunte Kinte was captured as a slave in 1767.

1996 Britain’s Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah, the Duchess of York, announce they are of divorcing.

2007 In one of America’s worst school attacks, a college senior kills 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech before taking his own life.

Birthdays

● Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI is 94

● Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II is 81

● Australian rock singer and former politician Peter

Garrett is 68

● Rock musician Jason Scheff (Chicago) is 59

● Singer Jimmy Osmond is 58

● Actor Claire Foy (TV’S The Crown )is37