TODAY HISTORY
TODAY is Tuesday, January 5, the fifth day of 2021. There are 360 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1871 — A group of Chinese miners find a nugget at Dunolly, Victoria, called ‘‘The Precious’’. It yields 50.418kg of pure gold.
1895 — The discovery of Xrays is announced by German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen; French captain Alfred Dreyfus, convicted of treason, is publicly stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island in French Guiana; he was ultimately vindicated.
1914 — The Ford Motor Company announces an eighthour workday and minimum daily wage of $5 in salary, plus bonuses.
1919 — The German Workers' Party, which would become the Nazi Party, is founded in Munich.
1922 — British Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton dies in the Falkland Islands while preparing a fourth expedition to the Antarctic.
1929 — King Alexander I suppresses the Yugoslav Constitution and establishes a dictatorship.
1933 — Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay.
1941 — Pioneer aviatrix Amy Johnson disappears while flying an Airspeed Oxford for the Air Transport Auxiliary from Prestwick via RAF Squires Gate to RAF Kidlington near Oxford. It is believed she went off course in adverse weather conditions, ran out of fuel and bailed out as her aircraft crashed into the Thames Estuary near Herne Bay.
1944 — The Daily Mail becomes the first major London newspaper to be published on both sides of the Atlantic.
1953 — Cruising from Yeosu to Busan, the South Korean passenger ferry Changgyeong sinks off Pusan with the loss of 229 lives.
1968 — Alexander Dubcek comes to power in Czechoslovakia, effectively beginning the ‘‘Prague Spring’’.
1969 — Soviet spacecraft Venus 5 is launched, followed five days later by Venus 6. They reach Venus on May 16 and 17 respectively.
1971 — Australia’s first oneday international cricket match is played, against
England.
1972 — US president Richard Nixon orders the development of the space shuttle.
1974 — The warmest reliably measured temperature within the Antarctic Circle, at the time, of 15degC is recorded at Vanda Station. The rising temperatures since resulted in a record temperature taken at the Comandante Ferraz Antarctic Station in February 2020 of 20.75degC.
1975 — The MV Lake Illawarra sinks after colliding with the Tasman Bridge across Hobart’s Derwent River; seven of the ship’s crew and five motorists die.
1976 — The Khmer Rouge proclaims the Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea. The state country is renamed Cambodia in 1990 in the runup to the United Nationssponsored 1991 Paris Peace Agreements.
1977 — In a move to protest the New Zealand Government’s plan to use land at Bastion Point for housing, Joe Hawke leads a group that pitches tents and occupies land Maori say had been unlawfully taken.
1981 — English police formally charge Peter Sutcliffe for the Yorkshire Ripper murders of 13 women.
1987 — Cheering students in China burn hundreds of copies of newspaper Peking Daily to protest government publications harshly critical of student demonstrations.
1991 — Cuba and the Soviet Union sign an agreement ending trade at easy terms and artificially low prices.
1993 — The tanker Braer runs aground in the Shetland Islands and spills 26 million gallons of oil during the next few days. Environmental damage is limited.
1997 — French trains are diverted to pick up stranded skiers and German rail stations are converted into homeless shelters as the death toll from Europe’s longest cold spell in a decade passes 230; Russia withdraws the last of its defence ministry troops from Chechnya, marking a formal end to Moscow’s illfated
military campaign in the region.
2000 — US authorities decide that Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy embroiled in an international custody battle, should be returned to his father in Cuba.
2004 — China orders some 10,000 civet cats in wildlife markets killed in its southern province of Guangdong after genetic tests suggest a link to a suspected Sars case.
2007 — Death aged 96 of Japan’s ‘‘Cup Noodle’’ king Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant noodles.
Today’s birthdays:
Shah Jahan, Mogul emperor, who had the Taj Mahal built in India for his queen
(15921666); Gottfried Lindauer, New Zealand artist (18391926); William Rose Bock, New Zealand engraver/stamp designer/publisher (18471932); Charles Blomfield, New Zealand landscape artist (18481926); Sir Eruera Tirikatene, New Zealand politician (18951967); Frank Winter, New Zealand Maori leader (190676); Jack Lovelock, New Zealand middledistance runner (191049); Roy Cowan, New Zealand potter/illustrator/ printmaker (19182006); Bob Aynsley, New Zealand rugby league player/administrator (19222012); Robert Duvall, US actor (1931); King Juan Carlos I of Spain (1938); ; Diane Keaton, US actress (1946); Matt Robson, New Zealand politician (1950); Warwick Freeman, New Zealand jewellery designer (1953); Stephen Swart, New Zealand cyclist (1965); Marilyn Manson, US singer (1969); Phil Joel, New Zealand musician (1973);
Kylie Bax, New Zealandborn model and actress (1975); Adi Dick, New Zealand singer/songwriter (1978).
Quote of the day:
‘‘He travels fastest who travels alone, and that goes double for she. Real feminism is spinsterhood.’’ — Florence King, US novelist, who was born on this day in 1936. She died in 2016, aged 80.