TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY is Friday, October 9, the 283rd day of 2020. There are 83 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1470 — Henry VI is restored to the English throne after being deposed in 1461.

1701 — The Collegiate School of Connecticut, later Yale University, is founded in New Haven.

1842 — The first wave of European settlers arrives in Auckland. Most of the 500 or so arrivals wade through mud to reach shore, where a desolate scene awaits them.

1888 — The Washington Monument, in Washington DC, opens to the public.

1930 — Laura Ingalls becomes the first woman to fly across the United States as she completes a ninestop journey from Roosevelt Field in New York to Glendale, California. A controversial character, she was imprisoned in 1942 for failing to register as a paid Nazi agent, for which she had been receiving about $300 a month. She was released from prison after 20 months.

1936 — A southbound Wairarapaclass railcar is blown off the rails at Featherston during a 130kmh northwest gale. Eight people are injured.

1941 — Stanley Graham returns to his home at Kowhitirangi, and kills two home guardsmen before making his escape back into the bush. Hundreds of police, military personnel and volunteers launch a manhunt; US president Franklin Roosevelt approves an atomic programme that would become the Manhattan Project.

1943 — New Zealand troops arrive in Italy. The 2nd New Zealand Division helps clear Italy of German troops.

1962 — Uganda becomes independent after nearly 70 years of British rule.

1963 — A massive landslip near Belluno, Italy, fills the narrow reservoir behind the Vajont Dam, causing water to overtop the dam, leading to a 250mhigh wave in the Piave Valley destroying the villages of Longarone, Pirago, Rivalta,

Villanova and Fae. Death toll estimates range from 1900 to 2500 people. The dam was largely undamaged. This disaster was one reason there was so much work stabilising potential slips in the Cromwell Gorge when the Clyde Dam was built; Mutesa II, the kabaka (ruler) of Buganda, becomes the first president of Uganda.

1967 — In accordance with a recent referendum favouring later closing of liquor outlets, bar closing times are extended until 10pm, marking an end to 6pm closing and what was termed ‘‘the six o’clock swill’’; Latin American guerrilla leader Che

Guevara is executed for attempting to incite revolution in Bolivia; British police begin using the first portable breathalyser, a device used for measuring breathalcohol levels.

1976 — Otago offspin bowler Peter Petherick becomes an international cricketing sensation after becoming just the second player, from any country, to take a hattrick in his international debut. He took the wickets of Pakistan’s Javed Miandad, Wasim Raja and Intikhab Alam, at Lahore. New Zealand went on to lose the match. Petherick had match figures of five wickets for 129 runs.

1985 — The hijackers of the Achille Lauro cruise liner surrender after the ship arrives in Port Said, Egypt.

2000 — Davo Karnicar (38), a Slovenian ski instructor, becomes the first person to ski nonstop down the slopes of Mt Everest in Kathmandu.

2001 — The trial of South Africanborn Colin Bouwer (51), the head of psychiatric medicine for Healthcare Otago, for the fatal poisoning of his wife begins in the High Court at Christchurch.

2006 — North Korea conducts its first nuclear test, with an estimated yield of between 0.4 kilotons and 2 kilotons.

2011 — Just as Christchurch residents were beginning to think the period of large earthquakes in the district had ended, the city was struck by a magnitude5.5 jolt centred off the coast at Sumner, at a depth of 12km.