Today in history
Today is Monday, March 26, the 85th day of 2018. There are 280 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1026 — Conrad II is crowned Holy Roman Emperor
by Pope John XIX.
1804 — The United States Congress orders Native
Americans to move west of the Mississippi River. 1828 — Austrian composer Franz Schubert gives
his only public concert, in Vienna.
1867 — The ship Montgomery is wrecked near
Napier.
1872 — US inventor Thomas J. Martin is awarded
a patent for the fireextinguisher.
1881 — A meeting is held to form the Otago Rugby
Football Union.
1885 — The Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co of Rochester, New York, manufactures the first commercial motionpicture film.
1896 — An explosion at the Brunner coal mine on the West Coast kills 67 men. The fatalities account for nearly half the workforce and it remains New Zealand’s worst mining accident.
1898 — The world’s first game reserve, the Sabi
Game Reserve, is designated in South Africa.
1936 — New Zealand becomes the first country in the world to broadcast on radio a live debate from Parliament.
1938 — A weekend excursion train is derailed at
Ratana, with the eventual loss of seven lives.
1942 — Nazi Germany begins sending Jews to the
Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
1944 — The New Zealand Corps is disbanded, having suffered more than 200 dead and 100 missing in battle in its short sevenweek existence.
1945 — In World War 2, the Battle of Iwo Jima ends after about 22,000 Japanese are killed or captured and more than 4500 US troops killed.
1947 — A tsunami hits the east coast, with waves as high as 10m. Due to it striking an isolated area of New Zealand, there were no reports of any injuries.
1953 — US researcher Dr Jonas E. Salk announces a new vaccine to immunise against polio.
1973 — Women are allowed on to the floor of the
London Stock Exchange for the first time.
1979 — The Camp David treaty is signed by Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, the first peace treaty between an Arab country and the Jewish state.
1991 — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay
sign the Treaty of Asuncion in the Paraguayan capital, launching the Southern Cone Common Market, Mercosur.
1992 — Britain’s Prince Andrew and his wife, the former Sarah Ferguson, separate.
1994 — Dame Whina Cooper, one of Maoridom’s inspirational leaders, dies aged 98.
1997 — The bodies of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate technoreligious cult are found in a mansion at Rancho Santa Fe, California, after their mass suicide.
1998 — Bill Clinton becomes the first American
head of state to visit South Africa.
2000 — Pope John Paul II crowns his Holy Land sojourn with a gesture to Jews when he places a plea for forgiveness in a nook in the Western Wall, expressing sorrow over the past errors of his church.
2001 — A fire in a Kenyan secondary school
dormitory kills 67 pupils.
2004 — United Nations secretarygeneral Kofi Annan opens a memorial conference on the 1994 Rwanda genocide at the UN by accepting institutional and personal blame for the 800,000 deaths initially ignored by world leaders.
2007— Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams, the leaders of Northern Ireland’s major Protestant and Catholic parties, open facetoface relations after four decades of conflict and announce a deal to create a powersharing administration.
Today’s birthdays:
William (Bill) Massey, 19th prime minister of New Zealand (18561925); Alan Arkin, US actor (1934); James Caan, US actor (1940); Bob Woodward, US journalist (1943); Diana Ross, US singer (1944); John Rowles, New Zealand singer (1947); Steven Tyler, US singer (1948); Glen Wilson, New Zealand squash coach and former professional player (1971);
Jeremy Stanley, All Black (1975); Ben Blair, All Black (1979); Martin Short, US actorcomedian (1950); Jennifer Grey, US actress (1960); Keira Knightley, English actress (1985).
Quote from history:
‘‘An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark, that is critical genius.’’ — US film director Billy Wilder, who was the first filmmaker to win three Academy Awards in a year for The Apartment in 1960.