Today in history
Today is Friday, September 28, the 271st day of 2018. There are 94 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
48BC — Pompey the Great, a leading statesman and general of the Roman Republic, is murdered in Egypt.
1066 — William the Conqueror lands at Pevensey, Sussex, and begins the Norman Conquest of England.
1745 — The British national anthem, God Save the King, is first performed, at London’s Drury Lane Theatre.
1781 — American and French troops begin the siege
of Yorktown.
1841 — Sir William Martin is appointed New
Zealand’s first chief justice.
1850 — Waitera Te Karei rides his horse 100km along the coast to the New Plymouth Police Station on Mt Eliot, deposits £35 and becomes the first customer of the newly formed New Plymouth Savings Bank. The bank is now known as the Taranaki Savings Bank (TSB); flogging of sailors in the United States Navy is abolished.
1867 — Toronto becomes the capital of Ontario. 1868 — The Battle of Alcolea causes Queen Isabella II of Spain to flee to France; the Opelousas Massacre at St Landry Parish, Louisiana, occurs.
1887 — In one of the deadliest natural disasters on record, the Yellow River (Huang He) floods in China, killing an estimated 900,000 people.
1894 — The first ‘‘Penny Bazaar’’, owned by Polish immigrant Michael Marks and Yorkshireman Thomas Spencer, opens in Manchester, England. 1924 — Two US Army planes land in Seattle, having completed the first roundtheworld flight in 175 days.
1941 — The Nazi Germany terror campaign begins
in Czechoslovakia.
1942 — The Waikato coalminers’ strike ends and
mines come under state control.
1950 — Indonesia is admitted to the UN.
1971 — Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty, of Hungary, who took refuge in the US embassy in Budapest in 1956 to escape treason charges, ends his exile and flies to Rome as a guest of the Pope.
1973 — The Sydney Opera House opens after 16 years of building at a cost of $100 million (the original estimate was $7 million).
1975 — The second stage of Dunedin’s oneway street deviation comes into effect, meaning southbound traffic will use Cumberland and Castle sts. The northbound deviation from Cumberland St to Great King St was completed three months earlier.
1978 — Pope John Paul I dies after 33 days in office; he is to be succeeded by John Paul II; former defence minister P.W. Botha is elected prime minister of South Africa.
1989 — Former president Ferdinand Marcos of the
Philippines dies in exile in Hawaii, aged 72.
1990 — A Philippines court finds an air force general and 15 soldiers guilty of the 1983 murder of politician Benigno Aquino, husband of former president Corazon Aquino, and sentences them to life imprisonment.
1994 — In Europe’s worst peacetime maritime disaster, 852 people drown when the ferry Estonia sinks en route from Tallinn to Stockholm.
2000 — Thousands of angry Indonesian students clash with security forces after a court dismisses charges of massive corruption against exdictator Suharto because of his failing health.
2012 — Mataura’s future is left in the balance when Alliance Group, the township’s biggest employer, announces plans to move its sheepprocessing operation to a sister plant at Lorneville, affecting 325 employees.
— Replacing Sir Jerry Mateparae, Dame Patsy Reddy is sworn in as New Zealand’s 21st GovernorGeneral, and the second female to hold the post.
Today’s birthdays:
Sir Robert Stout, twice New Zealand prime minister (18441930); Hubert (Tim) Armstrong, New Zealand politician (18751942); Bruce Mason, New Zealand playwright (19211982); Brigitte Bardot, French actress (1934); Graeme James Caughley, New Zealand population ecologist (19371994); Dorothy Quita Buchanan, New Zealand composer (1945); Helen Shapiro, British singer (1946);
Sylvia Kristel, Dutch actress (19522012);
Peter McCardle, New Zealand politician (1955); Mira Sorvino, US actress (1967); Naomi Watts, English actress (1968); John Schwalger, All Black (1983); Dan Keat, New Zealand football international (1987); Hilary Duff, US actress and singer (1987); Doug Bracewell, New Zealand cricket international (1990).
Thought for today:
Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours. — Thomas Mann, German writer (18751955).
ODT and agencies