Today in history
Today is Friday, December 7, the 341st day of 2018. There are 24 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1815 — France’s Marshal Ney is executed by firing squad in Paris near the Luxembourg Garden, following a treason trial for aiding Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo.
1889 — Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera The
Gondoliers premieres in London.
1897 — The first sitting of the Arbitration Court is
held in Dunedin.
1908 — The New Zealand Government completes the purchase of the Wellington to Manawatu railway.
1940 — The British attack larger Italian forces in Libya by surprise, capturing 40,000 prisoners in three days.
1941 — Japanese planes attack the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, destroying many aircraft and ships and precipitating the United States’ declaration of war on Japan.
1949 — The Nationalist Government of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, fleeing the communist takeover of mainland China, establishes its seat of government in Taiwan.
1953 — David BenGurion resigns as premier of
Israel.
1956 — JA 1274, the last steam locomotive to be built at Dunedin’s Hillside Workshops, enters service. Withdrawn from service in 1971, it is now on display at Toitu Otago Settlers Museum.
1963 — The bodies of two men are discovered in
ahouse in Remuera, Auckland. The killings became known as the ‘‘Bassett Rd machinegun murders’’.
1965 — Pope Paul VI and ecumenical patriarch Athenagoras I of Istanbul abolish the mutual excommunications of 1054 that split Christianity into Catholic and Orthodox.
1970 — The East Pakistanbased Awami League wins a majority in Pakistan’s general elections. In response, President Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan suspends the government, triggering widespread rioting in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. Deep divisions between East and West Pakistan lead to civil war.
1971 — An unmanned Soviet space capsule sends
back radio and television signals from Mars.
1972 — Imelda Marcos, wife of Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos, is slashed during a public ceremony in Manila by a man who is killed at the scene.
1974 — Archbishop Makarios returns to Cyprus after five months in exile, and says he will pardon those who plotted his overthrow. — Indonesia invades East Timor. — Twentythree police officers are injured when a riot in Queen St, Auckland, starts after power is cut during a free rock concert in Aotea Square.
1995 — A probe from the spacecraft enters the gases of Jupiter’s atmosphere and sends back 75 minutes of data before it disintegrates.
1998 — President Boris Yeltsin rouses himself from his sickbed for three hours, fires several of his top aides and then returns to the Kremlin hospital where he had been recuperating from pneumonia.
2002 — Miss Turkey, Azra Akin, wins the Miss World competition relocated to London from Nigeria. This followed the deaths of more than 200 people in violence between Nigerian Christians and Muslims, sparked by a newspaper article viewed by many Muslims as blasphemous.
2004 — Hamid Karzai is sworn in as Afghanistan’s
first popularly elected president, promising to bring peace to the wartorn nation and end the economy’s dependence on narcotics.
2012 — A quarter of a century after first lodging its Waitangi Tribunal claim, Ngati Toa sign a
$70 million final settlement with the Crown, covering the use of the famous Ka Mate haka, performed by the All Blacks.
Today’s birthdays
Noam Chomsky, US linguist and political activist (1928); Ellen Burstyn, US actress (1932); Tom Waits, US singersongwriter (1949); Te Ururoa Flavell, New Zealand politician (1955); Larry Bird, US basketball star (1956); Maureen Jacobson, New Zealand football international (1961); C. Thomas Howell, US actor (1966); Dan Mancini, New Zealandborn musician (1974); John Terry, English soccer player (1980); Aaron Carter, US pop singer (1987); Emily Browning, Australian actress (1988); Chris Wood, New Zealand football international (1991).
Quote from history
‘‘If I were a girl, I’d despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.’’ — Robert Graves, English poet and author of the novel I, Claudius, who died on December 7, 1985.