Today in history
Today is Saturday, August 25, the 237th day of 2018. There are 128 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1718 — French immigrants to the United States
found the city of New Orleans in Louisiana.
1920 — Euan Dickson flies from Christchurch to Wellington in an Avro 504K, making the first crossing of Cook Strait in an aircraft.
1940 — The British Air Force bombs Berlin for the
first time in an overnight raid in World War 2.
1941 — British and Soviet troops invade Iran following the shah’s refusal to reduce the number of resident Germans.
1942 — The Duke of Kent, the youngest brother of King George VI, dies in a plane crash during a World War 2 mission to Iceland.
1944 — After more than four years of Nazi occupation, Paris is liberated by the French 2nd Armoured Division and the US 4th Infantry Division. German resistance was light, and General Dietrich von Choltitz, commander of the German garrison, defied an order by Adolf Hitler to blow up Paris’ landmarks and burn the city to the ground before its liberation. Choltitz is hailed in many accounts as the ‘‘Saviour of Paris’’.
1948 — A tornado hits Frankton Junction, Hamilton, destroying about 150 homes and killing three people.
1950 — US president Harry Truman orders the army to seize control of the nation’s railroads to avert a strike.
1961 — President Janio Quadros of Brazil, citing
unidentified ‘‘occult forces’’, resigns unexpectedly after seven months in office and goes into exile in Australia.
1964— Kenneth Kaunda becomes president
designate of Zambia, formerly Northern Rhodesia.
1965 — A massive avalanche roars down from a glacier in the Swiss Alps, burying 108 people at a hydroelectric construction project.
1967 — Hanoi announces plans for the evacuation of all nonessential civilians in the Vietnamese city in view of increased US air attacks.
1978 — Chinese and Vietnamese forces clash in the Friendship Pass, an area on the border between the two countries.
1980 — The Otago Daily Times is published without
separate regional editions.
1981 — The US spacecraft Voyager 2 comes within 105,000km of Saturn’s cloud cover, sending back pictures and other data of the planet.
1986 — New Zealand test cricket bowler Derek Stirling is put to the sword in the third test, played at the Oval, by England’s Ian Botham, who belted him for 24 runs in one over to equal the then test record held by West Indian Andy Roberts. Ironically, Roberts scored his runs off Botham five years earlier.
1993 — A concretemixer truck collides with the side of a southbound Southerner passenger express. The truck’s mixer bowl bounces off the carriages, ripping two open. Three people are killed and seven more seriously injured.
1997 — Egon Krenz, the East German communist leader who threw open the Berlin Wall eight years earlier, is convicted of manslaughter for the shooting deaths of citizens who tried to flee to the West during the Cold War.
1998 — Malaysia’s highest court jails opposition leader Lim Guang Eng for sedition over his criticism of the Government’s handling of allegations of statutory rape against a former state chief minister.
2000 — The Zimbabwe Government names another 509 whiteowned farms it plans to confiscate for redistribution to landless blacks, bringing to 1542 the number it has targeted under a hastened land
seizure programme.
2001 — MetteMarit Tjessem Hoiby, a single mother and former waitress, marries Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon in Oslo, Norway.
2004 — South African police arrest Mark Thatcher, the son of Margaret Thatcher, on suspicion of involvement in a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea. Thatcher later pleads guilty and avoids jail in a deal with prosecutors.
Today’s birthdays:
Ivan IV (the Terrible), first tsar of Russia (153084); Ernest Beaglehole, New Zealand psychologist and ethnologist (19061965); Sean Connery, British actor (1930); Frederick Forsyth, British novelist (1938); Lisa Harrow, New Zealand actress (1943); Gene Simmons, US rock singeractor (1949); Elvis Costello, British singersongwriter (1954); Murray Taylor, All Black (1956); Billy Ray Cyrus, US singer (1961);
Aaron Jeffery, New Zealand actor (1970); Claudia Schiffer, German model (1970); Jeff Campbell, New Zealand football international (1979); Rachel Bilson, US actress (1981).
Thought for today:
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. — Bertrand Russell, English mathematician and philosopher (18721970).
ODT and agencies