TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Thursday, November 26, the 331st day of 2020. There are 35 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1769 — Captain James Cook and the crew
of the Endeavour enter the Bay of Islands. 1865 — Maori are declared British subjects when the Native Rights Act becomes law.
1889 — To celebrate the golden jubilee of British sovereignty, the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition is officially opened in Crawford St, Dunedin.
1897 — Mary MacKillop visits the Little Sisters of Mercy in South Dunedin. MacKillop was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995 and canonised in 2010.
1909 — The Forbury Park Trotting Club has its inaugural meeting.
1960 — New Zealand voters elect the National Party, led by Keith Holyoake, in the general election after the threeyear term of the Labour Government led by Walter Nash, remembered most for its ‘‘Black Budget’’ of 1958.
1965 — Ray Columbus wins the first Loxene Golden Disc award with Till We Kissed;
France launches Asterix, becoming the third nation to put an object in orbit using its own booster.
1966 — Vernon Cracknell (Social Credit) becomes the first member of a minor New Zealand political party since 1943 to win a seat in Parliament, when he wins Hobson with 48% of the vote.
1976 — Anarchy in the UK, the debut single of the Sex Pistols, is released, heralding the arrival of punk rock.
1983 — The Brink’sMat robbery occurs at the Heathrow International Trading Estate, London, when thieves make off with an estimated £26 million worth of gold bullion, diamonds, and cash. Two men are later convicted, but the majority of the gold has never been recovered. Several deaths have been linked to the case leading the what is known as the ‘‘Curse of Brink’sMat’’.
1989 — New Zealand gets a third television channel when TV3 goes to air. The privately owned television station will be in the hands of receivers, six months later.
1993 — A police helicopter and a trafficspotter plane collide over Auckland, crashing on to a motorway and killing four.
1995 — Nine people are killed and many seriously injured when a wall of a stand extension collapses during lunch in the fifth ODI between New Zealand and India in Nagpur. Players continued the game, won by New Zealand.
1998 — Tony Blair becomes the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the
Oireachtas, the parliament of the Republic of Ireland.
2005 — The All Blacks complete a second ‘‘grand slam’’ tour of the British Isles nations, beating Scotland 2910. They had previously beaten Wales 413, Ireland 457 and England 2319; the New Zealand rugby league team keeps Australia scoreless for the first time in 20 years to secure the Tri Nations title with an emphatic 240 win in the final at Leeds.
2007 — British teacher Gillian Gibbons is arrested in Sudan for allegedly insulting Islam by naming a teddy bear Mohammed. She is jailed for more than a week but eventually freed.
2011 — Prime Minister John Key claims that New Zealand voters have given the National Party a mandate to partially sell stateowned assets, despite receiving less than half (47.3%) of votes cast in a general election with only a 74.2% voter turnout.
2016 — The fishing charter vessel Francie capsizes in an attempt to make it back across the bar of the Kaipara Harbour in rough seas. Eight of the 11 men aboard are drowned.