Today in history
Today is Saturday, January 12, the 12th day of
2019. There are 353 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1598 — Pope Clement VIII seizes the Duchy of
Ferrara in Italy.
1848 — A revolt starts in Palermo, Italy, against the
corruption of the Bourbons.
1865 —The New Zealand Exhibition opens at the site of the present Dunedin Hospital. It has exhibits from all around the world, and attracts over 31,000 visitors from all parts of the country.
1872 — Permission is given for the construction of
a dry dock at Port Chalmers.
1878 — An Australian cricket XI plays Otago (with 22 players). Otago scores 124 and 93, while Australia scores 92 in its only turn at bat before the game is drawn because of rain.
1881 — The world’s first telephone box, called ‘‘Fernesprecher kiosk’’, goes into service at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin. To use it, one had to buy paper tickets called Telefonbillet, which allowed a few minutes of talking time. In 1899 it was replaced by a coinoperated telephone.
1896 — The start of a 13day heatwave in Bourke, New South Wales, where the daily average temperature was 47degC; 47 people died.
1915 — The United States House of
Representatives rejects a proposal to give women the right to vote.
1932 — Mrs Hattie Caraway becomes the first
elected female US senator.
1950 — A Swedish tanker strikes the British
submarine HMS Truculent during the submarine’s trials in the River Thames. Only 15 of 70 men in the submarine survive.
1954 — opens a special session of Parliament to launch New Zealand’s centennial year of parliamentary government.
1958 — The Soviet Union proposes a zone free of nuclear weapons from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean.
1967 — China’s army pledges support to Mao TseTung during disorder triggered by the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
1968 — The US and Cambodia agree on a policy to
keep Cambodia out of the Vietnam War.
1974 — The North African nations of Libya and Tunisia announce an agreement to merge as a new republic. The union never goes into effect.
1976 — The coalition cabinet in Thailand collapses with the resignation of Prime Minister Kukrit Pramoj.
1990 — Russian president Boris Yeltsin shocks the 28th congress of the Soviet Communist Party by announcing he is resigning his party membership.
— The US Congress grants President George Bush authority to use force to drive Iraq from Kuwait.
— The leader of Bosnia’s Serbs accepts peace proposals for the warshattered country, hailed as a breakthrough towards a settlement after nine months of brutal fighting; a 7.8magnitude earthquake strikes northern Japan, killing 196 people.
2000 — Britain lifts its ban on homosexuals serving in the military, accepting a landmark European Court of Human Rights ruling.
2006 — Threehundredandsixtytwo Muslim pilgrims are crushed to death during a stoning ritual at the Haj pilgrimage in Mena, Saudi Arabia.
2009 — Construction workers in northern Poland unearth a World War 2era mass grave containing what are believed to be the bodies of 1800 German men, women and children who disappeared during the Soviet Army’s march to Berlin. 2010 — An earthquake devastates Haiti, killing 230,000 people, injuring 300,000 and leaving more than one million homeless.
2012 — Wellington’s Ben Hana (Blanket Man), who became a feature of innercity Wellington street life, is taken to hospital, where he dies three days later.
Today’s birthdays:
Dorothy Wall, New Zealand author and illustrator (18941942); Des O’Connor, British entertainer (1932); George Joseph Kresge (The Amazing Kreskin), US mentalist (1935); Dick Motz, New Zealand cricketer (19402007); Sir Douglas (Doug) Graham, New Zealand politician (1942); Kirstie Alley, US actress (1951); Sir John Walker, New Zealand middledistance runner (1952); Angus Macdonald, All Black (1981); Tony Lochhead, New Zealand football international (1982).
Thought for today:
‘‘I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.’’ — British mystery writer Dame Agatha Christie, who died on this day in 1976.