Today in history
Today is Saturday, November 10, the 314th day of 2018. There are 51 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1846 — The first European child is born in Dunedin.
1871 — Henry Stanley finds African explorer Dr
David Livingstone, he presumes.
1880 — Donald Sutherland and John Mackay discover the spectacular 585m Sutherland Falls in Fiordland.
1886 — Roslyn Woollen Mills begins the manufacture of worsteds, the first in New Zealand.
1913 — A general strike ordered by the United Federation of Labour is observed in Auckland. Christchurch and Dunedin unions ignore the call for action.
1928 — Hirohito is enthroned as emperor of Japan.
1938 — AntiSemitic legislation is adopted in Italy.
1942 — Buoyed by the rout of Nazi forces at El Alamein in World War 2, British prime minister Winston Churchill says: ‘‘This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’’
1944 — It is disclosed that Germany is using a new
weapon, a V2 rocket, against England.
1955 — Sometimes referred to as the ‘‘Mary
Celeste of the South Pacific’’, MV Joyita is discovered 1000km west of its scheduled course, partly submerged and drifting north of Vanua Levu, with no trace of the 25 passengers and crew, but with four tonnes of cargo missing.
1963 — A cholera epidemic in India and Pakistan
is reported to have killed more than 1500 people.
1964 — Kenya becomes a oneparty state by consent.
1969 — The children’s educational programme
Sesame Street makes its debut on PBS television in the United States.
1973 — Southland’s Saturdayevening publication
Sports News is published for the final time. Dunedin’s equivalent, the Star Sports, will cease publication in 1979.
1975 —SS Edmund Fitzgerald is wrecked on Lake Superior, Canada, with the loss of 29 lives. The event spurs an international hit song for Gordon Lightfoot; Angola becomes independent of Portugal in the midst of a civil war.
1989 — Workers begin knocking a hole in the Berlin Wall; the first person to fly singlehanded around the world, Gaby Kennard, arrives back in Sydney;
Todor Zhivkov resigns after 35 years as Communist Party leader of Bulgaria.
1990 — Chandra Shekhar is sworn in as prime
minister of India.
1993 — A jury in Manassas, Virginia, acquits
John Wayne Bobbitt of marital sexual assault against his wife, Lorena, who had cut off his penis with a pair of scissors.
1997 — A judge reduces the conviction of Louise Woodward, a British au pair accused of killing her toddler charge in Boston, from seconddegree murder to involuntary manslaughter and orders her set free.
1999 — The United States Justice Department strips a retired Ohio factory worker of his citizenship, charging he served as an armed guard at a Nazi slave labour camp.
2000 — Philippine president Joseph Estrada denies new corruption allegations that he received a $US20 million kickback from the sale of the country’s largest telephone company and pocketed more than $US16 million from a controversial stock sale.
2004 — Chile begins to confront its legacy of humanrights abuses under the 197390 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet by completing a lengthy report on torture and political imprisonment, with testimonies from at least 35,000 victims.
2010 — A campaign in Dunedin to retain neurosurgical services proves successful. It is announced they will be enhanced rather than dropped.
Today’s birthdays
Martin Luther, Germanborn Protestant Reformation leader (14831546); Bill Watson, New Zealandborn Australian Army officer World War 1 and World War 2 and Australian rugby union representative (18871961); Patrick Jameson, New Zealandborn flying ace World War 2 (19121996); Duncan MacIntyre, New Zealand politician (19152001); Don Clarke, All Black (19332002); Andy Leslie, All Black captain (1944); Greg Lake, British rock musician (19472016); Jack Scalia, US actor (1950); Sinbad, US actorcomedian (1956); Mackenzie Phillips, US actress (1959);
Brittany Murphy, US actress (19772009);
Brendon Hartley, New Zealand racing car driver (1989).
Thought for today
A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. — William Hazlitt, British essayist (17781830).