TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Tuesday, September 6, the 249th day of 2022. There are 116 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1522 — Juan Sebastian Elcano completes the first circumnavigation of the world.
1620 — Pilgrims sail on Mayflower from Plymouth, England, to settle in the New World.
1666 — The Great Fire of London ends after destroying much of the city.
1715 — The Jacobite uprising known as the Fifteen begins at Braemar in Scotland.
1853 — Captain William Cargill is elected first superintendent of Otago; the Auckland Provincial Council holds its first meeting.
1855 — Colonel Thomas Gore Browne takes office as New Zealand Governor, serving until October 1861.
1866 — The Distinguished Service Order is instituted.
1898 — Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands is inaugurated.
1901 — United States president William McKinley is shot by an anarchist and dies eight days later.
1916 — Although it did not open until five days later due to delays in construction, the first true selfservice grocery store is founded in Memphis, Tennessee, by Clarence Saunders.
1924 — Ted Cook stars in the New Zealand football team’s 53 victory over Chinese Universities at Carisbrook.
1940 — King Carol II of Romania is forced to abdicate by the Axis powers in World War 2 in favour of his son Michael.
1941 — Jews over the age of 6 in Germanoccupied areas are ordered to wear yellow Stars of David.
1948 — Queen Juliana of the Netherlands is crowned.
1951 — Prince Talal is proclaimed king of Jordan after the assassination of his father, King Abdullah, in July.
1960 — Ten skeletons are found in a 3800yearold grave near Stonehenge, southern England.
1966 — Prime Minister Hendrik F. Verwoerd of South Africa, a staunch apartheid supporter, is stabbed to death by an immigrant from Mozambique during a parliamentary session in Cape Town.
1972 — The Summer Olympics resume in Munich, a day after the hostage crisis ends.
1973 — A superannuation scheme to provide every worker in New Zealand with an earningsrelated pension is tabled in Parliament.
1974 — Wallace Edward (Bill) Rowling (Labour) assumes office as prime minister following the death of Norman Kirk.
1975 — Czech tennis player Martina Navratilova seeks political asylum in the US.
1988 — Thomas Gregory, aged 11, becomes the youngest person to swim the English Channel, from Cap GrisNez to Shakespeare Point, Dover.
1989 — A Cuban airliner crashes into a
suburb on takeoff from Havana, killing 170 people.
1995 — Tahitian antinucleartesting protesters go on a rampage, burning down the territory’s main airport terminal and 19 other buildings, causing $NZ65.41 million of damage.
1996 — Ukrainian archaeologists discover a 2ndcentury Roman chapel on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.
1997 — Princess Diana is buried after a funeral service at Westminster Abbey seen by an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide.
2000 — The largest gathering of global leaders in history assembles at the UN Millennium Summit to chart an agenda for the 21st century.
2001 — The first Air France Concorde plane is cleared for commercial flights. The carrier’s fleet was grounded after a Concorde crashed outside Paris in July 2000, killing 113 people; a Kazakhstan court sentences former prime minister Akezhan Kazhegeldin to 10 years in prison for taking bribes, illegal possession of arms and abuse of power.
2010 — The creator of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Richard O’Brien, is finally granted permanent residency in New Zealand at the age of 68, after growing up here and earlier being refused.
Today’s birthdays:
Cecil Hight, New Zealandborn RAF pilot in World War 2 (191740); George (Roger) Waters, English musician (1943); Katherine Cannon, US actress (1953); Pauline Sullivan, New Zealand football international (1963); Douglas Pirini, New Zealand Olympic decathlete (1969); Dolores O’Riordan, Irish singer (19712018); Tim Henman, English tennis player (1974); Nina Persson, Swedish singer (1974); Michele Clarke, New Zealand football international (1982).