Today in history
Today is Saturday, April 14, the 104th day of 2018. There are 261 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1629 — The Peace of Susa ends the war between
England and France.
1775 — The first American society for the abolition of slavery is organised by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.
1828 — A first edition of Noah Webster’s American
Dictionary of the English Language is published.
1834 — The republican uprising in France is crushed
by the army under Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers.
1849 — Hungarians proclaim independence from the Hapsburg empire with La josKossut has governorpresident. The rebellion is put down by Russian troops in August.
1874 — The railway line between Wellington and
Lower Hutt is opened.
1890 — Delegates to the Washington Conference of American States create what is to become the PanAmerican Union in which North, South and Central America are all American nations.
1892 — At a hui of 96 chiefs at Te Tiriti o Waitangi marae, a Maori parliament is established. Its main aim is to unify tribes and ensure the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi are adhered to.
1912 — The British liner Titanic collides with an
iceberg in the North Atlantic and begins sinking.
1932 — Unemployed workers riot in central Auckland after the leader of the Unemployed Workers’ Movement, Jim Edwards, was batoned by police at a public meeting in Queen St. Approximately 200 people were injured in conflicts that followed and a number of Queen St shops were looted.
1937 — A national industrial conference begins, during which a new Federation of Labour is formed, with Angus McLagan as president; Dunedin’s chief post office is officially opened. 1939 — John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of
Wrath is published.
1945 — US bombers pound Tokyo and Japan’s
Imperial Palace in World War 2.
1956 — Ampex Corp demonstrates its first
commercial videotape recorder.
1964 — Milton’s Bruce Herald newspaper marks its
centenary.
1970 — The Government announces the replacement of imperial measurement with metric by the end of 1976.
1981 — Columbia, America’s first operational space shuttle, lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California after completing its first test flight.
1988 — The Soviet Union signs an accord to end its intervention in Afghanistan and to allow the Red Army to begin troop withdrawal.
1990 — Approximately 1500 drunken University of Otago students cause havoc in North Dunedin when a party in Castle St gets out of hand. They overturn cars, light street fires and pelt police with bottles and bricks. The disturbances continue well into the next day.
1993 — On International Women’s Day, a Chinese newspaper asks 100 women what they would like to be. Sixty said they wanted to be men.
1994 — Two US fighter planes shoot down two US
helicopters in northern Iraq, killing all 26 on board.
1997 — Hundreds of Iranian students clash with government troops outside the German embassy in the first violence since a Berlin court blamed Iran for a 1992 assassination.
2010 — A 6.9magnitude earthquake strikes a mountainous Tibetan region of China, killing at least 2698 people and injuring 12,135, with 270 missing.
2017 — Cyclone Cook makes landfall on the east coast of the upper North Island, before tracking down the country. Despite warnings of its possible severity, little damage occurs.
Today’s birthdays:
Sir George Grey, New Zealand governor and prime minister
(18121898); James Cowan, New
Zealand author (18701943);
Leonard Henry Trent, New
Zealand recipient of the Victoria
Cross in World War 2
(19151986); Alan MacDiarmid, New Zealandborn receipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (19272007); Loretta Lynn, US country singer (1932); Robin Tait, New Zealand Olympic and
Commonwealth Games athlete (19401984);
Julie Christie, British actress (1940); Brad Garrett, US actor (1960); Anthony Michael Hall, US actor
(1968); Adrien Brody, US actor (1973);
Sarah Michelle Gellar, US actress (1977).
Thought for today: