TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Thursday, October 29, the 303rd day of 2020. There are 63 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1618 — English adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh is executed in London, charged with treason against King James I.
1815 — Eleven people die when the sealing ship Betsey is wrecked in the Tasman Sea.
1841 — The ship Cornwaller arrives in Auckland with the first immigrants from Glasgow.
1888 — The Otago Daily Times publishes a description of the Sutherland Falls and the discovery of a track leading to the waterfall by Quinton McKinnon.
1891 — General William Booth of the Salvation Army visits Christchurch.
1894 — Incorrect navigation is blamed when the SS Waira
rapa runs into Miners Head, Great Barrier Island, with the loss of 121 lives.
1914 — The NZEF convoy arrives in Albany, Western Australia, where it joins the troop convoy carrying the main body of the Australian Imperial Force on its way to begin service in World War 1.
1919 — The Women’s Parliamentary Rights Act passes into law in New Zealand. It allows women to stand for election to the House of Representatives. It had been 26 years since women had achieved the right to vote with the Electoral Act 1893. The general election was contested just seven weeks after the passage of the Act. Three women stood: Rosetta Baume in Parnell, Aileen Cooke in Thames, and Ellen Melville in Grey Lynn. None were elected. Ten more women stood unsuccessfully before Elizabeth McCombs became New Zealand’s first female MP in 1933.
1929 — Prices crash on the New York Stock Exchange on what becomes known as Black Tuesday, heralding the Great Depression of the 1930s.
1930 — Becoming known to soldiers as the ‘‘Benghazi Boiler’’, the Thermette is patented by New Zealander John Hart.
1936 — Auckland’s 1ZB, New Zealand’s first Governmentowned commercial radio station, is opened prior to beginning broadcasting the following day.
1955 — The Tasman Pulp and Paper Mill at Kawerau begins New Zealand’s first commercial manufacture of newsprint; affectionately referred to as ‘‘The Big Dipper’’, the Mornington and Maryhill cablecar extension is closed.
1964 — The United Republic of Tanganyika, Zanzibar and Pemba changes its name to Tanzania.
1974 — Muhammad Ali knocks out George Foreman in the eighth round of a 15round bout in Kinshasa, Zaire, to regain his world heavyweight title. The fight was billed as ‘‘the rumble in the jungle’’.
1982 — The trial of Lindy Chamberlain, whose baby daughter was taken by a dingo at Uluru in 1980, ends with her conviction for murder. She was pardoned in 1987.
1995 — Filmmakers Peter Jackson and Costa Botes’ groundbreaking documentary,
Forgotten Silver, about Colin McKenzie, the handsome young lost hero of early New Zealand moviemaking, screens on TV One in the Montana Sunday Theatre slot. The ‘‘mockumentary’’ was later revealed as a hoax.
1997 — For the first time, Nato peacekeepers are arrested when seven Ukrainian soldiers serving in Bosnia are caught unloading more than $US620,000 in cigarettes, whisky, wine and cognac from two trucks in Mostar.
2015 — About 70 homes in Upper Hutt are cut off when a bridge slumps in the middle after a support beam weakens under pressure from floodwater; China announces the end of its onechild policy after 35 years.
Today’s birthdays:
Frederick Stanley Gordon, New Zealand flying ace World War 1 (18971985); Elise Mourant, New Zealand artist (192190); David Kear, New Zealand geologist (19232019); Elizabeth Moody, New Zealand actress (19392010); Michael Smither, New Zealand painter/composer (1939); Ted Baker, New Zealand scientist (1942); Tom Scott, New Zealand cartoonist (1947); Richard Dreyfuss, US actor (1947); Kate Jackson, US actress (1948); Jeff Simpson, New Zealand tennis player/coach (1950); Randy Jackson, US musician (1961); Jed Brophy, New Zealander actor (1963); Winona Ryder, US actress (1971); Gabrielle Union, US actress (1972); Tracee Ellis Ross, US actress (1972); Ben Foster, US actor (1980); Italia Ricci, Canadian actress (1986); Parris Goebel, New Zealand choreographer/dancer/singer/director/ actress (1991); India Eisley, US actress (1993).
Quote of the day:
‘‘I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages.’’ — Bill Mauldin, US editorial cartoonist, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work. He was born on this day in 1921 and died in 2003, aged 81.