Today in history
Today is Thursday, April 30, the 121st day of 2020. There are 245 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1789 — George Washington is inaugurated as the first president of the United States.
1803 — The US purchases the Louisiana Territory and New Orleans from the French, effectively doubling the size of the country.
1804 — Shrapnel, named after the British soldier
Henry Shrapnel, is used for the first time in warfare by the British against the Dutch in Suriname.
1815 — Alexander I, emperor of Russia, adopts the title of King of Poland.
1853 — The proclamation is made of Otago electoral boundaries, and the constitution of the general assembly and the Otago Provincial Council.
1859 — Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is first published in weekly instalments in the periodical All the Year Round.
1864 — In one of their first armed operations, several hundred Pai Marire fighters attack a British fort system at Te Morere (Sentry Hill) in Taranaki. Approximately 35 are killed.
1865 — New Zealand’s governor between December 1843 and November 1845, Captain Robert FitzRoy, commits suicide in England.
1900 — Hawaii becomes a territory of the US; Legendary American railway engineer Casey Jones dies while trying to stop his train, the
Cannonball Express, from colliding with a stalled freight train near Vaughan, Mississippi. His death in the crash was the only fatality.
1917 — On his first patrol as captain,
William Sanders receives the Victoria Cross for bravery during a German Uboat attack on his Qship HMS Prize, becoming the first and only New Zealander to win Britain’s highest military decoration in a naval action. Sanders and his crew later perished in another Uboat attack a little over three months later.
1934 — Under a new constitution in Austria, a
dictatorship is set up under Engelbert Dollfuss. 1940 — Teal begins the first regular Auckland to
Sydney flyingboat service with the craft Aotearoa. 1942 — A New Zealand war budget of £133 million
is introduced by Prime Minister Peter Fraser.
1945 — Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker with his wife, Eva Braun; Russian troops penetrate Berlin, capturing the Reichstag and other government buildings; Allied troops capture Munich and the French cross into Austria.
1973 — US president Richard Nixon accepts responsibility for the bugging that took place at the Watergate complex in 1972. 1975 — Vietnamese communist troops take over
Saigon, ending the Vietnam War.
1977 — Argentina’s Mothers of Plaza de Mayo hold their first weekly march, demanding the return of their missing children.
1980 — A sixday siege begins when armed gunmen seize the Iranian embassy in London, demanding the release of political prisoners in Iran.
1993 — Tennis star Monica Seles, the world’s No1 player, is stabbed with a kitchen knife courtside in Germany by a German supporter of her rival Steffi Graf.
2002 — Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe declares a nationwide ‘‘state of disaster’’ as a food crisis blamed on drought threatens thousands with starvation; after three years of planning, a multimilliondollar redevelopment of Dunedin’s University Oval is announced. The venue will replace Carisbrook as a test and oneday cricket venue.
2003 — Popular New Zealand rally driver Possum
Bourne dies in Dunedin Hospital, 12 days after crashing during preparations for the Race to the Sky Hillclimb, near Cardrona.
2009 — Chrysler automobile company files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It merges with Fiat in 2014.
2012 — Two fishermen are reported missing when the crayfishing boat KCee is wrecked off Doubtful Sound.
Today’s birthdays:
Douglas Lysnar, New Zealand politician (18671942); Cloris Leachman, US actress/comedian (1926);
Tom Coughlan, All Black (19342017); Burt Young, US actor/author (1940); Max Merritt,
New Zealand singer/songwriter
(1941); Jane Campion, New
Zealand film director (1954);
Tony Rogers, New Zealand middledistance runner (1957); Paul Gross,
US actor (1959); Stephen Harper, former Canadian prime minister
(1959); Mark Pirie, New Zealand writer (1974); Ali Williams, All Black (1981);
Kirsten Dunst, US actress (1982); Victoria (Tori) Spence, New Zealand actress (1984).
Quote of the day: