Today in history
Today is Friday, April 28, the 118th day of 2017. There are 247 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1789 — On a return journey from Tahiti, the crew of the British ship Bounty mutinies and sets Captain William Bligh and 18 sailors adrift in the South Pacific.
1864 — In the main action of the Tauranga campaign, the bombardment of Gate Pa begins. The 1700strong British force under Lieutenantgeneral Cameron is heavily armed as it engages 230 mostly Ngai Te Rangi defenders.
1876 — Queen Victoria is declared Empress of India.
1910 — Grafton Bridge in Auckland is offically opened. With an arch almost 98m wide, it was then the largest singlespan concrete bridge in the world.
1936 — King Farouk ascends the throne in Egypt. 1944 — A rehearsal for DDay ends with 750 American soldiers dead after their convoy ships are attacked by German torpedo boats off Slapton Sands, southwest England.
1945 — Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress are executed by partisans in World War 2.
1947—A sixman expedition sails from Peru aboard a balsawood raft named the KonTiki on a 101day journey across the Pacific to Polynesia.
1952 — Japan regains sovereignty and independence when the peace treaty signed in San Francisco in 1951 by the United States and 47 other nations comes into effect. 1967 — Heavyweight boxing champion
Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the US army.
1969 — Peter McKeefry, the Catholic archbishop of Wellington, is proclaimed New Zealand’s first cardinal; Charles De Gaulle resigns as French president after voters reject major government reforms in a referendum. 1987 — Australian businessman and adventurer
Dick Smith becomes the first person to fly over the North Pole in a helicopter.
1992 — A new smaller Yugoslav republic is established by Serbia and Montenegro after four other republics, Slovenia, Croatia, BosniaHerzegovina and Macedonia, secede.
1993 — In Turkey, an avalanche of rubbish triggered by a methane explosion buries squatter huts near a city dump, killing at least 18 people.
1995 — Fourteen people plunge 30m to their deaths when a viewing platform at Cave Creek, in the West Coast’s Paparoa National Park, collapses.
1996 — Gunman Martin Bryant (28) kills 35 people and wounds 18 others at Port Arthur in Tasmania. Among his victims was New Zealand winemaker Jason Winter.
1998 — British explorer David HemplemanAdams reaches the geographic North Pole, becoming the first person to reach the earth’s magnetic and geographic poles.
1999 — Peru’s President Alberto Fujimori orders armoured troop carriers and 20,000 police into the streets to control the first protest against his economic policies.
2000 — Dragan Nikolic, the first suspect to be indicted by the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, pleads not guilty to 80 counts of war crimes in his first appearance at the tribunal.
2001 — A Russian rocket lifts off from central Asia bearing the first space tourist, Californian businessman Dennis Tito, and two cosmonauts on a journey to the International Space Station.
2011 — Heavy rain falls in the central North Island, causing widespread flooding in the Hawkes Bay region.
2013 — Otago and the remaining areas of the South Island move to digital television. Westland and Nelson areas had changed earlier.