Today in history
Today is Friday, January 4, the 4th day of 2019. There are 361 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1717 — The Triple Alliance is formed between England, France and Holland to oppose Spanish ambitions in southern Europe.
1862 — Following a week of persistent rain, a heavy downpour brings flooding and wreaks havoc in the goldmining workings in Gabriels Gully.
1869 — Following a sixday siege, Te Kooti is defeated at Ngatapa. He escapes overnight, but 120 prisoners are shot by Ngati Porou warriors and colonial troops.
1885 — Dr William Grant of Davenport, Iowa, performs what is believed to be the first appendectomy.
1910 — Suffering major damage in Dusky Sound, the SS Waikare is successfully run aground on Stop Island by the captain, saving all passengers and crew. The vessel is wrecked.
1923 — Vladimir Lenin dictates a postscript to his ‘‘Lenin’s Testament’’ in which he suggests Stalin is too rude to be secretarygeneral and should be replaced.
1930 — Douglas Mawson discovers what became
known as Mac. Robertson Land in Antarctica.
1932 — The Indian Government introduces emergency powers as the Indian National Congress is declared illegal and
Mahatma Gandhi is arrested.
1936 — Billboard magazine in the United States
prints the first popularmusic chart. 1938 — The flying boat
Dunedin.
1944 — Allied forces launch an attack east of
Cassino, Italy, in World War 2.
1948 — The Union of Burma becomes an
independent republic.
1951— North Korean and communist Chinese
forces take Seoul, Korea.
1958 — A team led by Sir Edmund Hillary reaches the South Pole using modified tractors; Sputnik I, the world’s first artificial satellite, launched in October 1957 by the Soviet Union, falls to earth.
1961 — Nationalist rebels attack Portuguese military and civil targets in Luanda, Angola, the opening shots in a 14year colonial war.
1964 — Pope Paul VI begins a visit to the Holy Land, which includes the first visit by a pope to Jerusalem.
1967 — Donald Campbell, British car and speedboat racer, is killed on Coniston Water in England during an attempt to break the world waterspeed record. 1973 — Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is robbed of $US2 million ($NZ2.61 million) worth of art, including a Rembrandt valued at $US1 million.
1999 — Europe’s new currency, the euro, makes a
strong debut on the financial markets.
2002 — Death of the world’s oldest man, 112yearold Antonio Todde, who swore the secret of his longevity was a daily glass of red wine, on the Italian island of Sardinia.
2004 — A Hughes 500 369HS helicopter loses radio contact with the Milford radio tower while between the Routeburn Track and Milford Sound. Despite an extensive sixday search, the wreckage and the bodies of the two people aboard are not found for almost nine years, when the crash site is spotted by a commercial pilot by chance on a rocky hillside near Humboldt Creek.
2012 — The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) confirms Dunedin had its driest December since records were first taken at the Musselburgh site in 1918, with just 9mm of rain falling compared to the monthly average of 81mm. Dunedin was the fourthdriest southern centre, with Clyde recording 7mm and Gore and Manapouri both registering 8mm
Today’s birthdays:
Isaac Newton, English physicist (16431727); Jacob Grimm, German author (17851863); Louis Braille, French inventor of reading system for the blind (18091852); Sir Isaac Pitman, shorthand inventor (18131897); ‘‘General Tom Thumb’’ (Charles Sherwood Stratton), US circus midget (18381883); Dyan Cannon, US actress (1937); Alan Sutherland, All Black (1944);
Ken Bloxham, New Zealand rugby union international (19542000); Billy McClure, New Zealand football international (1958); Michael Stipe, US singer (1960); Dame Susan Devoy, New Zealand squash player (1964); Adrian Shelford, New Zealand rugby league international (19642003); Julia Ormond, British actress (1965); Olivia Tennet, New Zealand actress (1991).
Quote from history:
‘‘A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.’’ — Albert Camus, Algerianborn French existentialist writer. Camus, whose works include The Outsider and The Plague, died in a car accident on January 4, 1960.