Today in history
Today is Monday, March 30, the 90th day of 2020. There are 276 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1406 — On his way to France, James I of Scotland is captured at Flamborough Head and imprisoned by King Henry IV of England.
1806 — Joseph Bonaparte becomes king of Naples. 1842 — Ether is reputedly used as an anaesthetic for the first time, by Dr Crawford Long in the US. 1855 — End of the Taiping Rebellion in China.
1856 — The Treaty of Paris is signed, ending the Crimean War and guaranteeing the integrity of Ottoman Turkey.
1867 — United States secretary of state
William Seward reaches agreement with Russia to purchase the territory of Alaska for
$US7.2 million, a deal ridiculed in the US as Seward’s Folly.
1870 — The 15th amendment to the US Constitution, giving black men the right to vote, is ratified; the US Congress readmits Texas to the Union after it had seceded in 1861 to join the Confederate States.
1874 — Nelson becomes New Zealand’s fifth city. 1903 — Dunedin inventor Robert Miller demonstrates his method of generating power from wave movement near St Clair.
1940 — A funeral procession for New Zealand’s first Labour prime minister, Michael Joseph Savage (who died in office on March 27), is held. His body lay in state at Parliament for two days before his funeral cort`ege, which was more than 1.6km long, set off for the railway station at 9am.
1949 — Syrian general Husni alZa’im seizes power in a CIAbacked coup.
1957 — Following the demise of Dunedin’s tram service, five cable cars and five trailer bodies are sold by public auction at the Mornington tram sheds.
1966 — Lebanese prime minister Rashid Karami resigns because of protests that he was the only member of the Government in Parliament.
1967 — The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) formally closes its military headquarters in France.
1972 — The Northern Ireland (Temporary Provisions) Act comes into force, decreeing direct rule from London. Refusing to accept this, the prime minister of Northern Ireland,
Brian Faulkner, resigns.
1974 — A Chinese jetliner arrives in New York in what is described as the first civilian flight from the Chinese mainland to the US.
1978 — Two lions which escaped from Carlos’
Circus while in Lawrence are shot because of safety concerns after a 6yearold boy was clawed.
1981 — US president Ronald Reagan and his press secretary, James Brady, are shot and wounded outside the Washington Hilton.
1998 — RollsRoyce is purchased by German
carmaker BMW in a $US570 million deal.
1999 — A jury in Portland, Oregon, orders Philip Morris to pay $US81 million to the family of a man who died of lung cancer after smoking Marlboros for four decades.
2004 — Historian Michael King (58) and his wife Maria Jungowska die in a car accident in south Waikato. King’s Penguin History of New Zealand became the most popular book of the year, and was the Readers’ Choice at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
2008 — A fire deliberately set in the basement of the Stavely Building on the corner of Bond and Jetty sts, home to the Dunedin School of Ballet, causes substantial damage to the 130yearold central Dunedin building. 2013 — The chief executive of telecommunications company 2 Degrees, Eric Hertz (58), and his wife are killed when the light aircraft he was flying crashes into the sea off the Waikato coast.
Today’s birthdays:
Herbert Gilles Watson, New Zealandborn ace in the Australian Flying Corps in World War 1 (18891942); Frederick (Fred or Rangi) Houghton Thompson, New Zealand Olympic rower (19101971); John (Jack) Cowie, New Zealand cricketer (19121994); Warren Beatty, US actor (1937); Tane Norton, All Black captain (1942); Eric Clapton, English musician (1945); Robbie Coltrane, Scottish actor (1950); Stuart Dryburgh, Englishborn New Zealand cinematographer (1952); Paul Reiser, US actor (1957); Shane Rufer, New Zealand footballer (1960); Michael Thackwell, former New Zealand racingcar driver (1961); MC Hammer, US rapper (1963);
Tracy Chapman, US singer (1964); Ian Ziering, US actor (1964); Celine Dion, Canadian singer (1968); Dale Stewart, New Zealand film director, producer, actor, editor and screenwriter (1985).
Quote of the day:
‘‘What is not started will never get finished.’’ — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and statesman (17491832).