Today in history
Today is Thursday, July 19, the 200th day of
2017. There are 165 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1333 — A Scots army is defeated by the army of Edward III of England at the Battle of Halidon Hill.
1553 — Lady Jane Grey is deposed and Mary
Tudor is proclaimed Queen of England.
1588 — The Spanish Armada is sighted off the
Cornish coast of England.
1610 — Vasily Shuysky, Tsar of Russia, is deposed after the Swedish army sent against Polish invaders of Russia is defeated.
1821 — George IV of England is crowned king; he refused to allow his estranged queen, Caroline, to attend the coronation.
1837 — British civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s SS Great Western steamship is launched from Bristol; on the same date in 1843, his SS Great Britain, the first Atlantic liner built of iron, is launched.
1843 — A new form of female dress, bloomers, is introduced by their inventor, Amelia
Bloomer.
1864 — The first trees are planted in Hagley Park, Christchurch; Nanking, the capital of the Taiping Rebellion in China, falls to government troops, who proceed to slaughter 100,000 people.
1877 — The first Wimbledon tennis final is won
by Spencer Gore.
1880 — The first students enrol at a new school
of agriculture at Lincoln, near Christchurch. The agricultural college is the first to be established in the southern hemisphere.
1903 — The first Tour de France cycle race is
won by Maurice Garin.
1907 — The Emperor of Korea abdicates under
Japan’s pressure.
1909 — Almost a week after a mysterious object was witnessed in the night sky near Balclutha, Oamaru residents report the same occurrence.
1930 — Sir Robert Stout, who served two terms
as New Zealand prime minister, dies aged 86.
1941 — Winston Churchill introduces his World War 2 V for Victory campaign, which rapidly spreads through Europe; the BBC takes the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which matches the dotdotdotdash Morse code for the letter V, and begins to play it before news bulletins.
1947 — Burmese premier U Aung San and six other ministers are assassinated in the executive council chamber.
1955 — The threat of ‘‘no mine, no town’’ is removed from Kaitangata when the Government announces that it will open a new mine in the district.
1956 —The United States and Britain inform Egypt that they cannot participate in financing the Aswan Dam project.
1969 — Apollo 11 and its astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin and Michael Collins, go into orbit around the moon.
1980 — An unofficial team of four New Zealand athletes attends the Moscow Olympic Games. The Games were affected by a USled boycott protesting the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
1982 — The Privy Council rules that Samoans born between 1924 and 1948 are entitled to New Zealand citizenship.
1986 — Former prime minister Robert Muldoon launches a brief stage career as the narrator in the camp comedyhorror musical The Rocky Horror Show, at His Majesty’s Theatre in Auckland. 1988 — 112 people die when a United Airlines DC10 crashes while making an emergency landing at Sioux City, Iowa; 184 others survive. 2013 — A 5.7magnitude earthquake centred 30km east of Seddon, in Marlborough, at a depth of 8km, shakes Wellington for 30sec. It is followed by a number of strong aftershocks. No major damage was reported.
Today’s birthdays:
Samuel Colt, US gunsmith (18141862);
Lizzie Borden, acquitted of axe murders (18601927); George Hamilton IV US singer/actor (19372014); Vikki Carr, US singer (1942); Dennis Cole, US actor (19402009); Brian May, British rock musician (1947); Larkin Allen Collins jun, US rock guitarist (19521990); Terri Treas, US actress (1957); Anthony Edwards, US actor (1962); Nancy Walls, US actress (1966); Vinessa Shaw, US actress (1976);
Benedict Cumberbatch, English actor (1976).
Quote from history:
‘‘Boxing is a lot of white men watching two black men beat each other up’’. — Former boxing champion Muhammad Ali. He lit the flame that opened the centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta on July 19, 1996.