Today in history
Today is Monday, July 2, the 183rd day of 2018. There are 182 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1566 — French astrologer, physician and prophet
Nostradamus dies in Salon.
1644 — The Battle of Marston Moor brings the first
major Royalist defeat in the English Civil War.
1778 — JeanJacques Rousseau, the Swissborn French philosopher who introduced the motto ‘‘liberty, equality, fraternity‘‘, dies, aged 66, from a stroke.
1819 — The Factory Act is passed in Britain, prohibiting the employment of children under 9 in textile factories. Children under 16 could still be made to work for up to 12 hours a day.
1850 — Sir Robert Peel, British prime minister (183435 and 184146), founder of the Conservative Party and the police force, dies after a horseriding accident.
1881 — US president James Garfield is shot by Charles J. Guiteau in Washington and dies two months later.
1890 — The Brussels Act is passed by international conference to eradicate the African slave trade and liquor traffic with primitive peoples.
1900 — Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin flies his first
airship in Germany.
1902 — Archbishop Redwood addresses a large crowd gathered for the opening of the Little Sisters of the Poor home for the aged and infirm at Andersons Bay.
1937 — US aviator Amelia Earhart and navigator
Fred Noonan disappear while crossing the Pacific. 1947 — An object crashes near Roswell, New Mexico. The US Air Force later insists it was a weather balloon, but eyewitness accounts give rise to speculation it might have been an alien spacecraft.
1961 — American novelist Ernest Hemingway
fatally shoots himself at his home in Idaho.
1973 — Death of Betty Grable, US actress, singer and World War 2 pinup girl, whose films include How To Marry a Millionaire, Down Argentine Way and Tin Pan Alley.
1976 — North and South Vietnam, divided since 1954, are reunited as one country with Hanoi the capital following the Vietnam War; the US Supreme Court rules the death penalty is not inherently cruel or unusual.
1983 — Stu Wilson scores the All Blacks’ only try, to equal the test tryscoring record at the time of 16, when the All Blacks defeat the Lions 158 at Carisbrook in the ‘‘thermal test’’. Conditions were so cold, some of the All Blacks wore mittens, and thermals under their jerseys.
1986 — The police launch Lady Elizabeth II capsizes near Barretts Reef, outside Wellington Harbour. Despite a rapid response by a helicopter rescue crew, only three of the four men on board the launch are rescued.
1989 — Commercialfree Sunday television ceases in New Zealand, with advertisements originally permitted from noon.
1990 — Fourteen hundred hajj pilgrims are trampled to death and suffocated in a stampede in a pedestrian tunnel linking Mecca and a tent city.
1994 — Colombian soccer player Andres Escobar is slain in Medellin, 10 days after he scored an own goal during a game against the United States during World Cup competition.
1999 — Mario Puzo, US author whose bestseller The Godfather spawned the Mafia films directed by Francis Ford Coppola, dies aged 78.
2001 — Near death from heart failure, Robert Tools receives the first selfcontained heart, the Abio
Cor, in a landmark experimental operation in Louisville, Kentucky. The 59yearold died from
complications on November 30.
2002 — US millionaire Steve Fossett becomes the first solo balloonist to circle the globe nonstop, sailing into the record books off Australia’s southern coast. He had flown nearly 31,380km around the southern hemisphere. He finally landed on July 4.
Today’s birthdays:
Thomas Seddon, New Zealand politician (18841972); King Olaf V of Norway (190391); Sir Alec Douglas Home, British prime minister (190395); Pierre Cardin, French designer (1922); Imelda Marcos, former Philippines first lady (1929); Ron Silver, US actor (19462009); Jerry Hall, US model and actress (1956); Richard Swain, New Zealand rugby league international (1975); Michael Papps, New Zealand cricket international (1979); Lindsay Lohan, US actress (1986).
Quote from history:
‘‘Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It’s a bum’s life . . . The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.’’ — Marlon Brando, US film actor. The reclusive Oscarwinning star of The Godfather and On the Waterfront died on July 2, 2004, aged 80.