Today in history
Today is Thursday, October 18, the 291st day of 2018. There are 74 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1648 — Boston’s shoemakers, barrel makers and tub makers set up the first American labour organisation.
1685 — King Louis XIV of France revokes the Edict of Nantes, which established the legal toleration of France’s Protestant population, the Huguenots.
1767 — The boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, the MasonDixon line, which divides America’s south from the north, is agreed.
1867 — The United States takes formal possession of Alaska from Russia.
1891 — Rudyard Kipling arrives for a tour of New Zealand.
1892 — The first longdistance telephone line is opened between Chicago and New York.
1898 — The American flag is raised in Puerto Rico shortly before Spain formally relinquishes control of the island to the US.
1900 — Promoted by native minister James Carroll, the Maori Councils Act becomes law. The new Act sets up regional committees to run local government and health. The scheme suffers from a lack of funding and will cease to exist within the decade; the Workers’ Compensation for Accidents Act becomes law, its introduction making New Zealand a world leader in providing compensation for workrelated injuries.
1906 — German professor Arthur Korn transmits the first picture by telegraph.
1911 — The Otago Daily Times publishes an article on the firm Stedman & Wilson, which had begun the manufacture of motor vehicle bodies.
1912 — TSS Earnslaw makes its maiden voyage from Kingston to Queenstown.
1924 — Frank Bell, a Shag Valley farmer and radio pioneer, calls a student in London from a shed on his farm. He makes headlines around the world as it is the first global radio transmission.
1931 — US gangster Al Capone is convicted of income tax evasion and is later sentenced to 11 years in federal prison, fined $50,000 and charged $7692 for court costs, in addition to $215,000 plus interest due on back taxes.
1954 — The Telephone is the first performance by the New Zealand Opera Group (later the New Zealand Opera Company).
1964 — Pope Paul VI proclaims 22 new African saints. The saints, known as the Blessed Martyrs of Uganda, were a group of converts who were persecuted and martyred from 188587.
1968 — The US Olympic Committee suspends two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, for giving a Black Power salute as a protest at a victory ceremony in Mexico City.
1969 — In some of the worst crowd behaviour witnessed in test cricket, police were stoned, bonfires were lit in the stands and an attempt was made to set fire to thatched roofing when New Zealand dismissed India for a meagre 89 on the third day of the third test being played at Hyderabad; the US federal government bans artificial sweeteners known as cyclamates because of evidence they cause cancer in laboratory rats.
1981 — Andreas Papandreou’s Panhellenic Socialist Movement wins 48% of the vote in national elections, becoming Greece’s first leftist government.
1985 — The world’s first synthetic petrol plant begins producing petrol from Maui gas at Taranaki’s Motunui plant.
1999 — Former South African president Nelson Mandela begins his first visit to Israel, a gesture of final reconciliation with a nation that had backed South Africa’s apartheid regime.
2011 — A long dry spell ends along coastal Otago with up to 100mm of rain falling, causing minor slips and surface flooding around Dunedin. Flood warnings for Kelso put farmers on alert and flooding closes SH90 between Tapanui and McNab.
2012 — Queenstown’s $5.4m 110km cycle trail is opened by Prime Minister John Key.
Today’s birthdays:
Frederick Merriman, New Zealand politician (18181865); Sir Sidney Holland, 25th New Zealand prime minister (18931961); Chuck Berry, US rock’n’roll pioneer (19262017); Allan Wilson, New Zealand biochemist (19341991); JeanClaude Van Damme, Belgian actor (1960); Waimarama Taumaunu, New Zealand netball coach and former international (1962); Lisa Chappell, New Zealand actress (1968); Ryan Nelsen, New Zealand football international (1977); Jonathan (Jonny) Reid, New Zealand racing car driver (1983); Zac Efron, American actor/singer (1987).
Thought for today:
Only those ideas that are least truly ours can be adequately expressed in words. — Henri Bergson, French philosopher (18591941).