TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Wednesday, October 7, the 281st day of 2020. There are 85 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1571 — A combined Austrian, Genoese and Venetian fleet decisively defeats the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto, in the Gulf of Patras. The bloodiest sea battle before the age of steam claims approximately 30,000 lives.
1763 — King George III of Great Britain issues a proclamation closing lands in North America north and west of the
Alleghenies to white settlement.
1769 — Captain James Cook lands in New Zealand for the first time, at Poverty Bay.
1780 — In the American Revolution, 1100 British soldiers are defeated by an American militia in the Battle of King’s Mountain, South Carolina.
1806 — Carbon paper is patented in London by inventor Ralph Wedgwood.
1917 — German naval captain Count Felix von Luckner is imprisoned on Motuihe Island, Auckland. Captured in Fiji, von Luckner had been roving through the Pacific
in command of the raider Seeadler. He had sunk a number of ships and took more than 200 prisoners without loss of life.
1919 — The world’s oldest surviving airline, KLM, is established in the Netherlands.
1949 — The Republic of East Germany is
formed.
1959 — The far side of the moon is photographed for the first time by the Soviet Union’s Luna3 spacecraft.
1963 — United States president John F. Kennedy signs a nuclear test ban treaty between the US, Britain and the Soviet Union.
1967 — The military government in Greece ends housearrest restrictions against former premier Georgios Papandreou and other ousted officials.
1970 — Keith Holyoake becomes the first New Zealand prime minister to be knighted while still in office.
1977 — The Soviet Union adopts a new constitution, replacing one introduced in 1936.
1981 — Egypt’s vicepresident, Hosni Mubarak, is nominated as successor to slain president Anwar Sadat.
1982 — The Andrew Lloyd WebberTim Rice musical Cats, featuring the popular song Memory, opens on Broadway.
1985 — The Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro is hijacked by Palestinians in the Mediterranean.
1987 — Coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka declares himself head of state of the new republic of Fiji.
1995 — New York’s Central Park is transformed into a giant openair cathedral as Pope John Paul II celebrates Mass before 250,000 people.
1997 — After a generation of bloodletting, political leaders of Northern Ireland’s factions meet for the first full multiparty talks; 30,000 musicians, artists, labour leaders, politicians and leftists from around the world gather in Bolivia to commemorate where guerrilla leader Ernesto ‘‘Che’’ Guevara was buried 30 years earlier.
1998 — Thousands of people take to the streets of Russia to protest against unpaid wages and call on President Boris Yeltsin to quit.
2000 — Vojislav Kostunica is sworn in as Yugoslav (Serbia and Montenegro) president, in a historic shift towards democracy after 13 turbulent years of rule by Slobodan Milosevic.
2001 — The US invasion of Afghanistan begins with an air assault and covert operations on the ground.
2015 — Strong winds and soaring temperatures sweep through Otago and Canterbury, affecting flights and cutting power to many homes. The combination of wind and heat ignites approximately 100 fires in the two regions. The worst causes damage to up to nine houses in the Saddle Hill area, near Dunedin, where some residents require medical attention.
Today’s birthdays
Jean Begg, New Zealand welfare worker/ administrator (18861971); Cyril Allcott, New Zealand cricketer (18961973); Norman Alexander, New Zealand physicist (19071997); Geoffrey B. Orbell, New Zealand doctor and avid tramper best known for the rediscovery of the Takahe (19082007); Jim Brodie, New Zealand scientist/historian (19202009); Desmond O’Donnell, All Black (19211992); Bill Wolfgramm, New Zealand musician (19252003); Bryan Drake, New Zealand baritone (19252001); Desmond Tutu, South African Anglican cleric/theologian (1931); Barrie Devenport, New Zealand swimmer (19352010); Jack Body, New Zealand composer/art photographer/ musicologist (19442015); Kevin Godley, British musician (1945); John Mellencamp, US singer (1951); Marilyn Waring, New Zealand feminist/politician (1952); Vladimir Putin, Russian president (1952); Jayne Torvill, British skating champion (1957); Grant Turner, New Zealand footballer (1958); Simon Cowell, British music executive, television entrepreneur and judge (1959); Toni Braxton, US singer (1967); Thom Yorke, English musician (1968); Meighan Desmond, New Zealand actress (1977); Amy Satterthwaite, New Zealand cricketer (1986); Jeremy Brockie, New Zealand footballer (1987); Kurt Baker, New Zealand rugby sevens player (1988).
Quote of the day
‘‘Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is 100%.’’ — R.D. Laing, Scottish psychiatrist, who was born on this day in 1927. He died in 1989, aged 61.