The polio vaccine model
Overcoming big pharma’s profit motive has been
TODAY is Saturday, January 23, the 23rd day of 2021. There are 342 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
393 — Roman Emperor Theodosius I proclaims his 8yearold son Honorius coemperor.
1368 — Zhu Yuanzhang ascends to the throne of China as the Hongwu Emperor, initiating the Ming Dynasty rule over China, which would last for three centuries.
1556 — The Shaanxi earthquake, one of the deadliest ever recorded, kills about 830,000 people in Shensi Province, China.
1570 — James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, regent for the infant King James VI of Scotland, is fatally wounded with a carbine shot. He was the first head of government to be assassinated by a firearm.
1571 — The Royal Exchange opens in London.
1719 — The Principality of Liechtenstein is created
within the Holy Roman Empire.
1793 — Second Partition of Poland is agreed to in a treaty between Prussia and Russia.
1855 — A magnitude8.2 earthquake strikes the Wellington and Wairarapa areas, killing eight people.
1870 — In Montana, US cavalrymen kill 173 Native Americans, mostly women and children, in what becomes known as the Marias Massacre.
1882 — A huge fire, deliberately started by a local grocer, has a devastating effect on property in Queenstown.
1885 — Dunedin’s Joe Scott defeats English champion Arthur Hancock in a 24hour walking race for £100, covering 116 miles.
1887 — A fire breaks out in Guthrie and Larnach’s timber yard, raging through many buildings along Dunedin’s Princes St. Four people lost their lives.
1899 — The First Philippine Republic is formed and Emilio Aguinaldo is sworn in as its first president.
1912 — The International Opium Convention is signed at The Hague. It is the first international drug control treaty.
1920 — Holland refuses to surrender Germany’s former leader, Kaiser William II, to the Allies for punishment as a World War 1 war criminal.
1937 — The trial of 17 leading communists begins in
Moscow, after they were accused of involvement in a plot led by Leon Trotsky to overthrow the regime and assassinate leaders.
1941 — Charles Lindbergh testifies before the US Congress and recommends that the US negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler.
1951 — The Canterbury centennial yacht race between Wellington and Lyttelton begins, with 20 yachts taking part. Seventeen boats turned back due to a violent storm. Only Tawhiri officially finished the race, while Husky and Argo were lost, along with their 10 crew members.
1957 — US inventor Walter Frederick Morrison sells the rights to his flying disc to the WhamO toy company, which later renames it the ‘‘Frisbee’’.
1963 — Harold ‘‘Kim’’ Philby, a British journalist in Beirut, disappears. Later in the year it is revealed he was the third man in the BurgessMaclean spy scandal and had been granted asylum in Moscow; he died in 2011.
1973 — New Zealand prime minister Norman Kirk writes to French president Georges Pompidou, urging an end to nuclear testing in the South Pacific; US president Richard Nixon announces an accord has been reached in the Vietnam War.
1978 — Sweden becomes the first nation in the world to ban aerosol sprays containing CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) believed to be damaging Earth’s ozone layer.
1998 — South Africa’s former president P.W. Botha appears in court on charges of defying the Truth Commission and says afterwards he has nothing to apologise for.
2013 — A member of the Defence Force is injured and houses are evacuated as a large scrub fire ignited by grenade training and fanned by strong northwest winds takes hold at an army firing range north of the Old West Coast Rd, near Christchurch. The fire was one of several in the West Melton area in recent weeks and hotspots from those still existed; the New Zealand cricket team records its first series victory on South African soil, in any format of the game, when it goes 20 up in a threegame limitedovers series with a 27run victory at Kimberley.
2014 — Wicketkeeper Luke Ronchi’s 170 not out is one of many highlights of New Zealand’s oneday cricket international against Sri Lanka at Dunedin’s University Oval. He combined with Grant Elliott for a worldrecord sixthwicket stand of 267, eclipsing the previous mark by 49 runs.
Today’s birthdays:
Elizabeth Ann Louisa Mackay, New Zealand feminist/ community leader/inventor (18431908); Scobie Mackenzie, New Zealand politician (18451901);
Frederick William Hilgendorf, New Zealand agricultural scientist (18741942); Peter Murray, All Black (18841968); Dick Roberts, All Black (18891973); Bill Cunningham, New Zealand cricketer (19001984); Dame Dorothy Gertrude Winstone, New Zealand academic/public servant (19192014); Dame Margaret Clara Bazley, New Zealand public servant (1938); Richard Dean Anderson, US actor (1950); Robin Zander, US singer (1953); Princess Caroline of Monaco (1957); Annaliisa Farrell, New Zealand paralympic cyclist (1966); Adam Parore, New Zealand cricketer (1971); Suzy Shortland, Black Fern (1974); Nick Jones, New Zealand film director (1974); Tiffani Thiessen, US actress (1974); Paul Hitchcock, New Zealand cricketer (1975); Shaun KennyDowall, New Zealand rugby league international (1988); TJ Perenara, All Black (1992); Patrick Tuipulotu, All Black (1993).
Quote of the day:
‘‘This woman's work is exceptional. Too bad she's not a man.’’ — Edouard Manet, French modernist painter, who was born on this day in 1832. He died in 1883, aged 51.