Today in history
Today is Monday, November 12, the 316th day of 2018. There are 49 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1603 — Sir Walter Raleigh’s hightreason trial
opens in Winchester, England.
1812 — Napoleon Bonaparte’s army reaches the Russian city of Smolensk in its retreat from Moscow.
1814 — Thomas Kendall is appointed a justice
of the peace in New Zealand.
1855 — The first members are elected to the New
Zealand Parliament.
1859 — In Paris, the first ever flying trapeze act is performed by Jules Leotard at the
Cirque Napoleon without a safety net. The bodyhugging costume he used was later named after him.
1862 — The Invercargill Times begins publication.
It is later renamed The Southland Times.
1867 — A major eruption of Mt Vesuvius in Italy
begins and lasts for several months.
1912 — Strikebreakers and police storm the miners hall at Waihi on ‘‘Black Tuesday’’. One of the constables is wounded by gunfire. Fred Evans, the miner responsible for firing the shot, dies the next day after he is beaten. Evans becomes New Zealand’s first trade union martyr; a search party finds the remains of British explorer Captain Robert Scott and his companions after their illfated South Pole expedition.
1923 — Adolf Hitler is arrested for his attempted
German coup. 1927 — is expelled from the Communist Party in Russia, and Joseph Stalin becomes undisputed ruler.
1928 — The ocean liner sinks off the
Virginia coast with 328 aboard, killing 111.
1942 — Start of the Battle of Guadalcanal,
Solomon Islands.
1944 — The German battleship Tirpitz, sister ship of the Bismarck and Hitler’s last major warship, is sunk by Lancaster bombers at Tromso Fjord in northern Norway.
1960 — A large crowd gathers at Haast to mark the official opening of the road linking Otago to the isolated South Westland community.
1965 — The UN Security Council calls on all nations to refuse recognition to Rhodesia after it unilaterally declares independence from Britain.
1969 — The United States army announces for the first time that it is investigating William Calley for the alleged massacre of civilians at Vietnamese village My Lai in March 1968.
— A cyclone and tidal wave hit several districts of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing at least 200,000 people.
— After Islamic students seize the US embassy in Teheran on November 4, US president Jimmy Carter announces an immediate halt to all imports of Iranian oil.
1982 — Yuri Andropov is elected First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party following the death of Leonid Brezhnev.
1987 — Boris Yeltsin is fired as head of Moscow’s Communist Party for criticising the slow pace of reform.
1988 — The first bungy jump is made from the
Kawarau Bridge near Queenstown. Henry van Asch and A.J. Hackett’s enterprising venture is the first permanent commercial operation of its kind in the world.
1990 — Sir Timothy ‘‘Tim’’ BernersLee ,a British computer scientist, publishes a formal proposal for the creation of the World Wide Web.
— Israel’s ruling Labour Party unanimously approves Shimon Peres as its new leader, replacing slain prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
— American Airlines Airbus300 Flight 587 with 260 people on board crashes after taking off from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, hitting nearby homes. Everyone on the plane and five people on the ground are killed.
Today’s birthdays
Jimmy Duncan, New Zealand rugby union player, coach and referee (18691953); Malcolm Champion, New Zealand’s first Olympic Games gold medallist (18831939); Princess Grace of Monaco (192982); Brian Hyland, US singer (1943); Neil Young, Canadian singer (1945); Leslie McKeown, Scottish rock vocalist (1955); Nadia Comaneci, Romanian gymnast and Olympic gold medallist (1961); David Schwimmer, US actor (1966); Craig Parker, New Zealand actor (1970);
Tamala Jones, US actress (1974);
Anne Hathaway, US actress (1982).
Thought for today:
Don’t be a pal to your son. Be his father. What child needs a 40yearold for a friend? — Al Capp, American cartoonist (19091979).
ODT