Today in history
Today is Wednesday, October 16, the 289th day of 2019. There are 76 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1843 — Sir William Rowan Hamilton comes up with the idea of quaternions, a non-commutative extension of complex numbers.
1847 — Charlotte Bronte’s book Jane Eyre is published.
1848 — Measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, the first and largest in a cluster of earthquakes to strike central New Zealand causes extensive damage in Wellington. Three people died.
1861 — The first site of the privately owned Bank of New Zealand opens in Auckland. Within six months, 10 branches are operating around the country.
1865 — A reluctant Edward William Stafford takes up the post of premier for the second time. He first served from June 1856 to July 1861. His second term lasts until June 1869. A third term in 1872 lasts for just a month. His total time in office is the fifthlongest of any New Zealand leader and the longest of any leader without a political party.
1875 — The Dunedin City Council purchases the gasworks for £43,500.
1914 — The New Zealand Expeditionary Force
departs Wellington for war service in Europe. 1916 — Margaret Sanger opens America’s first
birthcontrol clinic, in New York City.
1934 — Mao Zedong and 25,000 troops begin the 6000mile Long March.
1936 — New Zealander Jean Batten arrives in Mangere, Auckland, having completed the first solo direct flight from England to New Zealand.
1953 — Seven RNZAF servicemen are killed in a midair collision in Christchurch.
1962 — The Cuban Missile Crisis begins when US president John F. Kennedy is informed by his aides that reconnaissance photographs reveal the presence of missile bases in Cuba.
1963 — The Indecent Publications Act, which establishes New Zealand’s Indecent Publications Tribunal, becomes law.
1964 — Defending champion Peter Snell wins the 800m final at the Tokyo Olympic Games; China detonates its first atomic bomb; Harold Wilson becomes British prime minister.
1968 — During their 200m medal ceremony in the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City, AfricanAmerican athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos each raised a blackgloved fist during the playing of the US national anthem.
1973 — Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho are named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize but the Vietnamese general declines the award.
1978 — The College of Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church chooses Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to be the new pope. He takes the name John Paul II and is the first nonItalian pope in 456 years.
1981 — In a Royal Command Performance at the St James Theatre in Auckland, Howard Morrison sings the Maoritranslated version of How Great Thou Art and receives sustained applause. Whakaaria Mai, when released as a single, remains in the charts for over six months.
1993 — Street violence erupts in Southeast London when police fight to keep more than 15,000 antiracism protesters from marching on the headquarters of a political party that advocates expelling Asian and black Britons.
1996 — Seventyeight people are crushed to death at an overcrowded Guatemalan stadium when fans without tickets barge in to see a World Cup football qualifying match between Guatemala and Costa Rica.
1999 — A New York Air National Guard plane rescues Dr Jerri Nielsen from a South Pole research centre after she spent five months isolated by the Antarctic winter, and treating herself for breast cancer.
2012 — Orokonui Ecosanctuary, near Dunedin, becomes home to 44 wild tuatara. It is the farthest south tuatara have been free to roam in more than 100 years.
Today’s birthdays
Keith (Grid) Caldwell, New Zealand fighter ace WW1 and air commodore WW2 (18951980); Angela Lansbury, Englishborn actress (1925); Peter Bowles, English actor (1936); Barry Corbin (born Leonard Barrie Corbin), US actor (1940); Suzanne Somers, US actress (1946); Stephen (Steve) Mellor, US actor (1954); Tim Robbins, US actor (1958); Flea, Australianborn musician (1962); Greer RobsonKirk, New Zealand actress (1971); John Mayer, US singer (1977); Michael Venus, New Zealand professional tennis player (1987).
Quote of the day
‘‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.’’ — Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright and poet, who was born on this day in 1854. He died of of meningitis in 1900, aged 46.