TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Thursday, January 21, the 21st day of 2021. There are 344 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1521 — Pope Leo X excommunicates German religious reformer Martin Luther.
1643 — Dutch mariner Abel Tasman discovers Tonga in the Pacific.
1749 — Built in 1716, the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, Italy, is destroyed by fire, as a result of a torch being left behind in the box of a nobleman after a performance. It is rebuilt in 1754.
1788 — Ships of the First Fleet begin entering Sydney Harbour.
1789 — Considered to be the first American novel, The Power of Sympathy or the Triumph of Nature Founded in Truth by William Hill Brown, is published in Boston.
1793 — After being found guilty of treason by the French National Convention, King Louis XVI is beheaded.
1854 — Sometimes described as ‘‘the first Titanic’’, RMS Tayleur, a full rigged iron clipper ship chartered by the White Star Line runs aground and sinks off Lambay Island, in the Irish Sea off the coast of north County, Dublin, Ireland, while on its maiden voyage. Of the more than 650 aboard, only 280 survive.
1870 — British troops begin their withdrawal from New Zealand.
1889 — American professor Tom Baldwin claims to be the first person to fly in New Zealand (in a hotair balloon), and the first to descend by parachute, when he jumps from a hotair balloon 1000ft (300m) above South Dunedin’s Caledonian Ground.
1893 — The Tati Concessions Land, formerly part of Matabeleland, is formally annexed to the Bechuanaland Protectorate, now Botswana.
1900 — The Second New Zealand contingent leaves for the Boer War.
1908 — New York City passes the Sullivan Ordinance, making it illegal for women to smoke in public. Katie Mulcahey, the only person cited for breaking this ordinance, was fined $5 for smoking in public and arrested for refusing to pay the fine. The mayor, George McClellan, later vetoes the ordinance.
1911 — The Papakura Racing Club holds its final race meeting; the first Monte Carlo motor rally begins. It is won by Henri Rougier driving a 25hp TurcatMery.
1919 — A Sinn Fein congress in Dublin, Ireland, adopts a Declaration of Independence.
1925 — Albania declares itself a republic.
1927 — Trentham is the venue of New Zealand’s first national yearling thoroughbred sale.
1945 — The Brazilian Expeditionary Force leads an Allied attack on Monte Castello in Italy, the only participation of South American troops in World War 2.
1948 — The flag of the Canadian province of Quebec is adopted and flown for the first time over the National Assembly of Quebec. The day is marked annually as Quebec Flag Day.
1949 — Chiang Kaishek resigns from the Chinese presidency following Nationalist Party reversals.
1950 — American lawyer and government official Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury in relation to espionage.
1952 — Jawaharlal Nehru’s Congress Party wins the general election in India. 1954 — The first atomic submarine, USS Nautilus, is launched in the US.
1960 – Little Joe 1B, a Mercury spacecraft, lifts off from Wallops Island, Virginia, with Miss Sam, a female rhesus monkey on board; a coal mine collapse at Holly Country, South Africa, kills 435 miners.
1968 — Thirtyone North Korean commandos attempt to attack South Korea’s presidential palace. All but one die in gunfights; 34 South Koreans are killed. The Battle of Khe Sanh, one of the most controversial battles of the Vietnam War, begins at the Khe Sanh Air Base; a B52 bomber crashes near the US Thule Air Base, north of the Arctic Circle, contaminating the area after its nuclear payload ruptures. One of the four bombs remains unaccounted for.
1971 — The Emley Moor transmitting station, the tallest freestanding structure in the United Kingdom, begins transmitting UHF broadcasts.
1976 — Two Concorde aircraft enter service with flights from London to Bahrain and Paris to Rio de Janeiro, the first scheduled passenger services by the supersonic jet; Western newspapers, including the Financial Times and New
York Times, go on sale in the Soviet Union for the first time.
1977 — US president Jimmy Carter pardons almost all Vietnam War draft evaders.
1981 — Production of the iconic DeLorean sports car begins in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland.
1990 — East Germany’s Communist Party expels Egon Krenz, the leader who oversaw the opening of the Berlin Wall.
1994 — A US court finds Lorena Bobbitt innocent by reason of insanity of feloniously cutting off her husband’s penis, after she testified to years of brutal treatment.
1996 — Yasser Arafat emerges from the first Palestinian election with a mandate to lead his people to independence.
1998 — Pope John Paul II arrives on a historic fiveday visit to communist Cuba.
2005 — The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, finds a cold (179degC) world with a dense largely nitrogen atmosphere, rivers, lakes and seas (probably of liquid methane and ethane); and wind and hydrocarbon rain. The probe landed on Titan a week earlier, on January 14.
2006 — A whale stranded in the River Thames is hauled on to a barge and moved towards the sea while thousands of Londoners flock to see the rescue operation.
2008 — Black Monday in worldwide stock markets. The FTSE 100 had its biggest ever oneday points fall, European stocks closed with the worst result since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, and Asian stocks drop as much as 15%; Emerald, Queensland, is declared a disaster zone after floods force the evacuation of 370 people, kill stock and cut off more than 100 properties.
2017 — More than 2 million people demonstrate worldwide in a largescale women’s march protesting Donald Trump’s first full day as President of the United States.
2018 — Rocket Lab’s Electron becomes the first rocket to reach orbit using an electric pumpfed engine and deploys three CubeSats.
2019 — A light aircraft carrying English Premier League team Cardiff City’s record signing Emiliano Sala disappears near the Channel islands on the way to Wales.
2020 — The scientific journal Nature Communications reports that the world’s oldest asteroid that hit Yarrabubba in Western Australia about 2.2 billion years ago, may explain how the planet was lifted from an ice age.
Today’s birthdays:
Edward Thomas Gillon, New Zealand journalist/newspaper editor (184296); John Court, New Zealand businessman/ lawn bowls player/city councillor (18461933); Tom (Angry) Cross, All Black and New Zealand rugby league international (18761930); William Webb, first New Zealander to hold the professional world sculling championship title (18801960); Ronald Alexander McIntosh, New Zealand journalist/astronomer (190477); Camille (Cam) Malfroy, New Zealand international tennis player and WW2 flying ace (190966); Ted Bollard, New Zealand plant physiologist/science administrator (19202011); Ronald Sinclair (Ra Hould), New Zealand actor (192492); Bill Andersen, New Zealand trade unionist (19242005); Sir Ron Scott, New Zealand sports administrator (19282016); Sir Peter Tapsell, New Zealand politician/doctor (19302012); Mick Cossey, All Black (193586); Jim Anderton, New Zealand politician (19382018); Placido Domingo, Spanish tenor (1941); Pat Rosier, New Zealand writer (19422014); Geena Davis, US actress (1956); Phil Horne, New Zealand cricketer/badminton player (1960); Jim Cassidy, New Zealand jockey (1963); Ruben Wiki, New Zealand rugby league international (1973); Kim Dotcom, New Zealandbased internet entrepreneur (1974); Joe Vagana, New Zealand rugby league international (1975); Emma (Baby Spice) Bunton, UK singer (1976).
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