Today in history
Today is Thursday, November 22, the 326th day of 2018. There are 39 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1699 — A treaty is signed by Denmark, Russia, Saxony and Poland for partition of the Swedish Empire.
1718 — English pirate Edward Teach, better known as ‘‘Blackbeard’’, is killed during a battle off the Virginia coast.
1865 — Up to 400 Pai Marire fighters are taken prisoner and transported to the Chatham Islands when they surrender at Poverty Bay.
1906 — The SOS distress signal is adopted at the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin.
1935 — The flying boat the China Clipper leaves San
Francisco on the first transpacific airmail flight. 1939 — Bernard Freyberg takes command of New
Zealand’s expeditionary force in World War 2.
1942 — Units from the American Expeditionary
Force begin to arrive in New Zealand.
1943 — Lebanon is granted independence after two decades of French mandate rule; British prime minister Winston Churchill, US president Franklin Roosevelt, and China’s Chiang Kaishek agree in Cairo on measures to defeat Japan in World War 2.
1956 — The first Olympics held in the southern hemisphere open in Melbourne, with junior world mile recordholder Ron Clarke lighting the flame.
1962 — The Soviet Union announces the end of the combatreadiness alert of its armed forces imposed at the start of the Cuban missile crisis.
1963 — United States president John F. Kennedy is assassinated as he rides in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. Vicepresident Lyndon B. Johnson becomes the 36th president.
1967 — The UN Security Council approves Resolution 242, which calls for Israel to withdraw from territories it captured in the 1967 Six Day War, and implicitly calls on adversaries to recognise Israel’s right to exist.
1972 — US president Richard Nixon lifts the
22yearold ban on American travel to China.
1977 — The British and French supersonic airliner Concorde begins service from New York’s Kennedy International Airport after a lengthy dispute over noise levels.
1986 — Pope John Paul II becomes the first pope to visit New Zealand when he arrives on a threeday tour.
1990 — British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, after being defeated by John Major in a ballot for Conservative Party leader, resigns after 111⁄2 years in office. 1994 — Death of Charles Upham, the New Zealand soldier who was twice awarded the Victoria Cross during World War 2, aged 86.
1998 — Albanians ratify the country’s first postcommunist constitution in a referendum.
2002 — Officials cancel the Miss World pageant in Nigeria and move it instead to London after news that the African nation will host the event sparks deadly riots.
2006 — Nepal celebrates the end of a bloody 10year communist insurgency by declaring a public holiday, and the international community hails the deal under which communist rebels will join an interim government.
2016 — Centred 20km southeast of Culverden, the upper South Island is shaken by a strong 5.7magnitude aftershock of the 7.8magnitude earthquake that caused widespread destruction nine days earlier; it is announced that the troubled Pumpkin Patch chain of clothing stores throughout Australia and New Zealand will cease trading by the end of February.