Today in history
Today is Wednesday, December 5, the 339th day of 2018. There are 26 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1560 — Charles IX succeeds as King of France on
the death of Francis II.
1792 —The trial of France’s King Louis XVI begins; George Washington is reelected United States president and John Adams as vicepresident. 1797 — Napoleon Bonaparte arrives in Paris to
command forces for an invasion of England.
1812 — Napoleon Bonaparte leaves his troops
retreating from Russia and sets out for Paris. 1848 — US president James Polk triggers the gold rush of ’49 by confirming gold was discovered in California.
1881 — An earthquake strikes the Canterbury region, dislodging stone from the Christchurch Cathedral spire.
1882 — The first A&P show is held at Gore.
1890 — At the general election, members of New Zealand’s House of Representatives are elected under the ‘‘one man one vote’’ principle for the first time.
1895 — The Balclutha to Owaka railway opens.
1905 — The first sod of Otago Dock is turned by
Prime Minister Richard Seddon.
1933 — Lincoln Ellsworth and Sir Hubert Wilkins leave Port Chalmers on the Wyatt Earp for the Antarctic.
1934 — The Soviet Union executes 66 people charged with plotting against the Stalin government; Parliament grants Turkish women voting and election rights as part of modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s westernisation reforms.
1936 — The Soviet Union adopts a new constitution
under a supreme council.
1938 — Export and import licensing controls take
effect in New Zealand.
1952 — A Maungaturoto to Auckland freight train crashes into a stationary mixed train at Kaukapakapa Station. One person is killed and another seriously injured.
1956 — British and French forces begin a
withdrawal from Egypt in the Suez War.
1977 — Egypt breaks diplomatic relations with five Arab nations that were hostile to President
Anwar Sadat’s peace overtures to Israel.
1994 — Russia seals the border of the breakaway republic of Chechnya and both the Chechen government and opposition leaders express fears of imminent Russian intervention.
1996 — US president Bill Clinton names UN ambassador Madeleine Albright as the country’s first female secretary of state.
1997 — Cuauhtemoc Cardenas is inaugurated as the first popularly elected mayor of Mexico City. Cardenas, who many Mexicans believe was fraudulently deprived of a 1988 presidential election victory, pledges to fight crime and corruption.
2001 — New Zealand yachtsman Sir Peter Blake, twotime winner of the America’s Cup, is slain by Brazilian pirates on the Amazon River.
2005 — The first witness to take the stand against ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein recalls mass arrests, tortures and killings.
2006 — Fiji’s military chief, Commodore
Frank Bainimarama, overthrows the government in the country’s fourth coup in 20 years.
2016 — New Zealand prime minister John Key takes the country by surprise when he announces his resignation; his successor to be appointed by a caucus vote on December 12.