Today in history
Today is Monday, June 4, the 155th day of 2018. There are 210 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1783 — The Montgolfier brothers fly a hotair balloon publicly for the first time, on a 10minute flight from the marketplace in their hometown of Annonay, France.
1805 — The first annual Trooping the Colour ceremony takes place at Horse Guards Parade, London.
1831 — The Belgium Congress proclaims Prince Leopold of SaxeCoburg as the first monarch of an independent Belgium.
1879 — The ship Knowsley Hall leaves London bound for Lyttelton with 89 passengers and crew and is not heard of again.
1896 — Henry Ford makes a successful predawn test run of his horseless carriage, called a
quadricycle, through the streets of Detroit.
1913 — British suffragette Emily Davison runs in front of the king’s horse, Anmer, during the Epsom Derby and dies four days later.
1926 — Moved by member of Parliament
Mr C.J. Dickie, the Returned Soldiers Association adopts a recommendation to reaffirm the policy of ‘‘a white New Zealand’’.
1937 — The first supermarket trolleys are introduced,
at an Oklahoma City supermarket.
1939 — During what became known as the ‘‘Voyage of the Damned’’, the MS St Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany, is turned away from the Florida coast. The ship returns to Europe and many of the refugees later die in Nazi concentration camps.
1940 — British prime minister Winston Churchill makes his famous ‘‘We shall fight on the beaches . . . we shall never surrender’’ speech to the House of Commons; the Allied evacuation from Dunkirk, France, is completed. In a week, a flotilla of navy and civilian ships saved 198,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian troops from the invading Germans.
1943 — Travelling at excessive speed, the Cromwell to Dunedin express derails at Hyde; 21 people are killed and 58 injured. The driver is later found guilty of manslaughter; Second Lieutenant Ngarimu is posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for an attack he led on Point 209 at Tebaga Gap, Tunisia, a few weeks earlier.
1946 — General Juan Peron is inaugurated as
president of Argentina.
1949 — The Government announces that the
Invermay property at North Taieri will be taken over and used as an agricultural and research station for Otago.
1950 — Butterrationing in New Zealand comes to an end. It is the last commodity in the country to be free of rationing.
1963 — Fire sweeps through McKenzies department store in George St, causing extensive damage. It is the worst fire in Dunedin since the Arthur
Barnett store fire in December 1959.
1968 — Sir Walter Nash, veteran New Zealand
politician and prime minister from 195760, dies.
1970 — The Kingdom of Tonga becomes a member
of the British Commonwealth.
1984 — Indian troops attack the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar to flush out occupying militants. About 1200 people die in the fighting, and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is killed in reprisal by her Sikh bodyguards four months later.
1989 — The first partially free parliamentary elections in Poland in nearly 50 years end Moscowimposed communist rule.
1995 — The All Blacks score a worldrecord number of points in a rugby international when they defeat Japan 14517 in a World Cup pool match in Bloemfontein. Otago’s Marc Ellis scores six of the team’s 21 tries.
2011 — A gas explosion at the site of new water mains in Onehunga, Auckland, kills one worker and seriously injures three others.
Today’s birthdays
John Grigg, New Zealand astronomer (18381920); Richard Treacy Henry, New Zealand conservationist (18451929); Walter Hadlee, New Zealand cricket captain (19152006); William Fyfe, New Zealand geologist (19272013); Maurice Shadbolt, New Zealand writer/playwright (19322004); Bruce Dern, US actor (1936); Parker Stevenson, US actor (1952); Kenny Cresswell, New Zealand international football player (1958); Sean Fitzpatrick captain, All Black (1968); Filo Tiatia, All Black (1971); Noah Wylie, US actor (1971); Kelly Jarden, New Zealand international football player (1973); Angelina Jolie, US actress (1975); Ben Stokes, New Zealandborn English cricketer (1991).