Today in history
Today is Monday, July 24, the 205th day of 2017. There are 160 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1534 — Jacques Cartier lands in Canada and claims the territory for France.
1567 — Barely more than a year old, the son of Mary Queen of Scots is crowned James VI when his mother, defeated by rebel Scottish lords, abdicates the throne. He will later become
King James I of England upon the death of his cousin, Queen Elizabeth I.
1790 — The United States Patent Office opens. The first patent is issued for a new method of making potash, used in fertiliser and glass.
1824 — The results of the world’s first public opinion poll are published in Delaware, on voting intentions for the next US presidential election.
1847 — Brigham Young and the first Mormons arrive at Great Salt Lake, in presentday Utah.
1866 — Tennessee becomes the first state readmitted to the Union after the American Civil War.
1883 — Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel (in 1875), drowns while trying to swim the rapids above Niagara Falls.
1901 — The barque Lizzie Bell is wrecked off the Taranaki coast, with the loss of 12 lives.
1909 — UFOs are again reported when a group of boys playing on the beach at Kaka Point report seeing a ‘‘huge illuminated object moving about in the air’’. It was witnessed the following night at 8.30 and 10.30.
1911 — Yale University professor Hiram Bingham discovers the Inca city of Machu Picchu in Peru.
1929 — US president Herbert Hoover proclaims the KelloggBriand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy.
1939 — A record snowstorm begins in Dunedin that will paralyse traffic and isolate the city.
1946 — The US makes the first underwater test of an atomic bomb off the atoll of Bikini in the Pacific Ocean.
1955 — New Zealand’s first electric rail passenger service is completed on the line between Wellington and Upper Hutt.
1959 — During a visit to the Soviet Union, Vicepresident Richard Nixon gets into a ‘‘kitchen debate’’ with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev at a US exhibition.
1965 — Prisoners attempt to set fire to Mt Crawford prison in Wellington.
1969 — The US Apollo 11 astronauts, including the first men to walk on the moon, splash down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
1974 — The US Supreme Court orders President Richard Nixon to surrender 64 White House tape recordings to the Washington District Court conducting the Watergate proceedings; Konstantinos Karamanlis returns from exile and is sworn in as prime minister of Greece after the junta relinquishes control.
1976 — The US spacecraft Viking 1 lands on Mars and starts tests to determine whether life exists on the planet.
1983 — Australian golfer Jack Newton loses an arm and an eye when struck by the propeller of a light aircraft in Sydney.
1985 — A Colombian air force cargo aeroplane, carrying 80 people because of a strike by commercial airline pilots, crashes when an engine catches fire. There are no survivors.
1987 — Ninetyoneyearold Hilda Crooks climbs Mt Fuji and becomes the oldest person to climb Japan’s highest peak.
1996 — Dunedin’s Danyon Loader wins a second gold medal at the Atlanta Olympic Games, in the 400m freestyle, having won the 200m freestyle on July 20.
1997 — After 290 years of union, the British Government offers Scots the power to legislate, to tax and to speak for themselves in the European Union.
2002 — Nine coalminers in southwestern Pennsylvania are rescued after three days trapped in a 1.2m chamber 75m below the surface.