TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Thursday, May 2, the 123rd day of 2024. There are 243 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1536 — Anne Boleyn is arrested and taken to the Tower of London.
1839 — The first prospectus of the New Zealand Company is published in London. It is the vision of the company to profit by settling British people in New Zealand, as proposed by Edward Gibbon Wakefield.
1858 — Potatau ¯ Te Wherowhero is crowned Potatau, the first Maori ¯ king. He had been chosen, because of his ancestry and mana, at a meeting at Pukawa in November 1856.
1868 — The clipper Celestial Queen arrives at Port Chalmers with the first live shipment of salmon and trout ova from England. These fish were intended to provide sport for the settlers, but none survived.
1889 — The Earl of Onslow assumes office as New Zealand governor. Remaining in office until February 1892, he is best remembered for his disputes with Premier John Ballance.
1907 — The first use of Waipori electricity is for lighting in Dunedin.
1929 — New Zealand snnooker player Edward James (Murt) O’Donoghue becomes the first player to clear the table from a break in competition, while playing in a tournament in Auckland.
1935 — New Zealand’s first ‘‘talkie’’ feature film, Down on the Farm, premieres at the Empire De Luxe Theatre (later the St James and now the Rialto) in Moray Pl, Dunedin.
1936 — Sergei Prokofiev's musical Peter and the Wolf premieres in Moscow.
1940 — In World War 2, the second echelon of 2NZEF, including 28 (Maori) ¯ Battalion, departs from Wellington.
1945 — More than a million German soldiers officially surrender to the Western Allies in Italy and Austria, and the Battle of Berlin ends as the Soviet army takes Berlin and General Weidling surrenders, signalling the end of WW2 in Europe.
1951 — A procession in Wellington of striking waterside workers clashes with police, who use their batons when strikers attempt to break through a police cordon at the corner of Cuba and Dixon sts.
1953 — Jordan’s King Hussein ascends the throne, by the Islamic calendar, on his 18th birthday.
1964 — The last scheduled tram service in New Zealand takes place in Wellington on the Thorndon to Newtown route. Tram No252, displaying the message ‘‘end of the line’’ was driven by Wellington Mayor Frank Kitts.
1965 — The first satellite television programme links nine countries and over 300million viewers.
1974 — Former US vicepresident Spiro Agnew is disbarred by the Maryland Court of Appeals, effectively preventing him from practising law anywhere in the United States.
1982 — The Argentine cruiser General Belgrano is sunk by a British submarine, killing 368 Argentine sailors. It is the worst single death toll of the 10week war over possession of the Falkland Islands.
1990 — The African National Congress and the South African Government open three days of negotiations in Cape Town on gradually ending white rule in South Africa.
1996 — Prime Minister Jim Bolger announces details of a New Zealandbased honours system, replacing the traditional British orders. In Marchr John Key announces the restoration of knighthoods and damehoods to the honours system.
1999 — Yugoslav authorities hand over to the Rev Jesse Jackson three American prisoners of war, who had been held for a month; Mireya Moscoso becomes the first woman to win Panama’s presidential election.
2011 —Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, attacks and the FBI’s most wanted man, is killed by US special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
2016 — Leicester City win the English Premier League football title after starting the season at 50001 odds.
2022 — New Zealand reopens its borders to international visitors from more than 60 countries after being closed for two years during the pandemic, a move welcomed by the tourism industry.