Today in history
Today is Tuesday, January 17, the 17th day of 2017. There are 348 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1377 — Pope Gregory XI restores the Papal See to Rome after it was removed from Avignon.
1562 — Michel de l’Hopital promulgates the Edict of St Germain, which recognises Huguenots in France.
1595 — France’s King Henry IV declares war on
Spain.
1601 — The Treaty of Lyons between France, Spain and Savoy is signed and the capital of Spain is transferred from Madrid to Valladolid.
1759 — The Holy Roman Empire declares war on Prussia.
1773 — Captain Cook, commanding the ship
Resolution, becomes the first to cross the Antarctic Circle.
1851 — James Macandrew and a number of immigrants arrive at Port Chalmers on the schooner Titan.
1852 — The Sand River Convention establishes the South African Republic of Transvaal.
1853 — A New Zealand Constitution Act is proclaimed.
1856 — The Otago Southland Provincial Government is gazetted, with the intention to build the town of Invercargill, which is named by Governor Thomas Gore Brown.
1858 — Fourteen people lose their lives during flooding in the Hutt Valley.
1859 — The Strathallan arrives at Timaru with the first group of immigrants for the area.
1893 — Hawaii’s monarchy is overthrown as a group of white businessmen force Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate.
1912 — Captain Robert Scott and his expedition reach the South Pole, one month after Norway’s Roald Amundsen.
1919 — Classical pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski becomes prime minister of Poland.
1929 — King Inayatullah Khan of Afghanistan is forced to abdicate after a coup; he ruled for only three days; Popeye makes his first appearance as a character in a comic strip.
1936 — Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels tells Germany: ‘‘We can manage without butter but not without guns. If we are attacked we can only defend ourselves with guns, not with butter.’’
1946 — The United Nations Security Council holds its first meeting.
1953 — A Royal New Zealand Air Force Harvard, from the Taieri aerodrome, crashes in the Mt Aspiring National Park while searching for two missing trampers. Miraculously the pilot survives but his fellow crew member dies from injuries before being rescued.
1959 — The Federal State of Mali is formed by the union of the republics of Senegal and French Sudan.
1966 — A US B52 bomber collides in midair with a refuelling tanker over Spain, killing eight, and the bomber’s Hbomb falls into the Atlantic.
1994 — An earthquake devastates suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, California, killing 61 and injuring over 10,000.
1995 — Japan’s deadliest earthquake in 70 years strikes Kobe and other western cities, killing more than 5000 people.
1997 — In Dublin, a court grants the first divorce in Ireland’s history.
1999 — The body of Ashburton teenager Kirsty Bentley, who had been missing since New Year’s Eve, is found at Camping Gully in the Rakaia Gorge. The case has not been solved.
2002 — It is a late finish for businesses in the CBD when Dunedin is hit by flash flooding at 5.50pm.
2008 — One of New Zealand’s greatest poets, Hone Tuwhare, dies in Dunedin, aged 85.