Today in history
Today is Tuesday, July 25, the 206th day of 2017. There are 159 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1593 — King Henry IV of France becomes a Roman Catholic for the second and final time in an effort to gain Paris and be recognised as the legitimate king.
1797 — British naval commander
Horatio Nelson’s right elbow is shattered by grapeshot during an assault on Tenerife; the arm had to be amputated.
1814 — George Stephenson tests his first steam locomotive, the ‘‘Blucher’’.
1843 — Death of Charles Macintosh, the Scottish chemist best known for his invention of a method for making waterproof garments.
1864 — Maori warriors lay down their arms at Tauranga. As punishment for rebelling, a quarter of their land is confiscated and transferred to military settlers.
1865 — Death of Dr Jane Barry, who became the first female doctor in Britain by disguising herself as a man, James Barry. She became an inspectorgeneral in the British army in 1812 and only revealed her sex on her deathbed.
1871 — William Schneider of Davenport, Iowa, patents the modern merrygoround.
1909 — Louis Bleriot makes the first crossing of the English Channel by air, flying his monoplane from Les Baraques, near Calais, to Dover.
1917 — Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, the Dutch spy known as Mata Hari, is sentenced to death on charges of spying for Germany during World War 1.
1927 — The New Zealand football team draws 2all with Canada, before a crowd of 10,000 at Carisbrook.
1934 — Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss is assassinated in an unsuccessful Nazi coup attempt in Austria.
1943 — Benito Mussolini is forced to resign as prime minister of Italy during World War 2.
1952 — Emergency regulations introduced during the 1951 waterfront strike in New Zealand are revoked.
1956 — The Italian liner Andrea Doria and the Swedish ship Stockholm collide off the coast of New England, with the loss of 50 lives.
1959 — A hovercraft makes its first crossing of the English Channel, from Dover to Calais.
1965 — At Paparua prison, Christchurch, prisoners riot and set ablaze the eastern wing.
1968 — Pope Paul VI bans all artificial birth control methods for Roman Catholics.
1971 — Doctor Christiaan Barnard transplants two lungs and a heart into a man in Cape Town, South Africa, and the operation is described as successful.
1981 — Antitour demonstrators invade the ground at Hamilton prior to the South Africa v Waikato rugby match, forcing the match to be abandoned.
1984 — Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to walk in space.
1988 — A New York judge orders the feuding San Diego Yacht Club and New Zealand’s ‘‘big boat’’ challenge by Michael Fay to settle the battle for the America’s Cup with a September race. Dennis Conner’s Stars and Stripes syndicate countered by successfully defending the cup with a catamaran.
1999 — Dunedin bass Jonathan Lemalu wins Australia’s most prestigious opera award, the Operatic Aria, in Sydney.
2000 — An Air France Concorde travelling to New York crashes into a hotel outside Paris shortly after takeoff, killing 113 people.
2001 — Three masked men shoot Phoolan Devi, India’s onetime Bandit Queen, killing the outlawturnedlegislator, who was idolised by the poor as a champion of the lower castes.
2004 — Israelis form a human chain stretching 90km from Gaza to Jerusalem to protest Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Gaza Strip withdrawal plan.
Today’s birthdays:
Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell), British author (19031950); Ian Cromb, New Zealand cricketer (19051984); Bruce Woodley, Australian guitarist (1942); Verdine White, US singer (1951); Iman Abdulmajid, model/actress (1955); Thurston Moore, US musician (1958); Ricky Gervais, English actor/comedian (1961); George Michael, British pop singer (19632016); Matt LeBlanc, US actor (1967)
Quote from history:
‘‘I just get on with my life normally.’’ —
Louise Brown, the world’s first testtube baby, on her 25th birthday. She was born on July 25, 1978, at Oldham General Hospital in Lancashire, England.
ODT and agencies