Today in history
Today is Saturday, September 30, the 273rd day of 2017. There are 92 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1839 — William Wakefield takes possession of Port Nicholson, Wellington, on behalf of the New Zealand Company.
1846 — American dentist William Morton uses ether as an anaesthetic for the first time on a patient in his Boston office.
1870 — The Canterbury Museum building is opened in Christchurch.
1929 — The first rocketpowered aircraft, the
Opel RAK.1 glider, is tested by its inventor, Fritz von Opel.
1935 — Porgy and Bess, a folk opera by US composer George Gershwin, has its premiere in Boston.
1939 — Britain sends a 150,000man force to France after the start of World War 2.
1949 — The Berlin Airlift, which delivered
2.3 million tonnes of food and fuel to West Berliners while circumventing a Soviet blockade, comes to an end.
1952 — The motionpicture process Cinerama, using three cameras, three projectors and a deeply curved viewing screen, debuts with the premiere of This Is Cinerama in New York City.
1962 — Riots break out in Oxford, Mississippi, when black student James Meredith is enrolled into the formerly whiteonly University of Mississippi, in line with a Federal Court order.
1965 — Considered a genius by many of his peers, Dunedinborn Alexander Aitken retires from the Chair of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, where he worked for 40 years; six of Indonesia’s top army generals are kidnapped and killed in an abortive coup. Turmoil ensues, leading to the deaths of between 400,000 and 3,000,000 communists and President Sukarno being replaced by General Suharto.
1970 — The Lockington underground coalmine at Kaitangata closes.
1971 — Nearly 79,000ha of land is added to Mt Aspiring National Park, increasing the area of New Zealand’s newest national park to
3555sq km. It is now second in size only to Fiordland National Park and among the largest in the world.
1980 — Israel takes a step back to biblical times with the introduction of the shekel as its currency, replacing the pound.
1982 — Controversial Clyde Dam legislation is hurried through the House of Representatives with the assistance of Social Credit MPs, despite the Government’s water right not being valid.
1984 — An Egyptian court sentences 107 Muslim extremists to prison for attempting to set up an Islamic regime after the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat.
1987 — The Waitangi Tribunal rules that the sea can be owned in the same way as the land.
This allows Maori challenges to the fishing quota system.
1989 — RoseNoelle breaks up on a reef just off Great Barrier Island. The trimaran had capsized when struck by a giant wave off Hawke’s Bay and had been drifting upside down for 119 days. All four crew members survived the ordeal.
1990 — The Soviet Union and Israel formally agree to establish diplomatic relations, broken after the SixDay War in 1967.
2008 — Horrified investors watch in disbelief as their wealth is eroded by a slump in global markets that triggers what will be termed a ‘‘global economic crisis’’. Many New Zealand finance companies are bankrupted.
2010 — Two commuter trains collide headon after one of them derailed after hitting a slip north of Wellington. Two people suffered moderate injuries.
2012 — The South Island’s West Coast and Hawke’s Bay are the first regions to switch to digital television. The process of switching from analogue receivers was completed in the South Island on April 28, 2013.
Today’s birthdays:
Deborah Kerr, Scottishborn actress (19212007);
Angie Dickinson (born Angeline Brown), US actress (1931); Johnny Mathis, US singer (1935); Marc Bolan, English musician (19471977); Ehud Olmert, former Israeli prime minister (1945); Fran Drescher, US actress (1957); Eric Stoltz, US actor (1961); Monica Bellucci, Italian actress (1964); Lacey Chabert, US actress (1982).
Thought for today:
After three days without reading, talk becomes flavourless. — Chinese proverb.
ODT and agencies