Today in history
Today is Monday, November 27, the 331st day of 2017. There are 34 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1832 — The world’s first tram, a horsedrawn vehicle named John Mason, goes into operation in New York.
1849 — Maori chief Te Rauparaha dies at Otaki.
1879 — The French Chamber is moved from
Versailles to Paris.
1919 — Bulgaria signs a World War 1 peace treaty
which yields territory to Greece and Yugoslavia.
1926 — New Zealand champion Pat Hannan regains the world single sculls championship on the Whanganui River.
1935 — New Zealand’s Labour Party, led by
Michael Joseph Savage, records a decisive victory in the general election.
1940 — In Romania, the proNazi Iron Guard slaughters more than 60 aides of the exiled king, including former prime minister Nicolae Jorga.
1941 — The last Italian forces in Ethiopia under
General Nasi surrender at Gondar.
1942 — The French navy at Toulon scuttles its ships and submarines to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis.
1946 — The New Zealand electorate returns the
Peter Fraserled Labour Party at the general election, but with a narrow majority.
1954 — Former United States diplomat Alger Hiss, convicted of perjury in 1950 for having denied he passed Department of State secrets to a communist courier, is released from prison after serving 44 months.
1967 — Israeli forces raze Arab buildings in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank in response to Arab attacks, while the return of some Arab refugees from the East Bank to the Israelioccupied West Bank resumes; French President Charles De Gaulle rules out negotiations for early British entry into the European Common Market.
1973 — The US Senate votes 923 to confirm Gerald Ford as vicepresident, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who resigned.
1975 — Ross McWhirter, coeditor and compiler of the Guinness Book of World Records, is shot dead by Irish Republican Army gunmen at his home.
1978 — Japanese prime minister Takeo Fukuda resigns after defeat in a party poll; San Francisco mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk, a gayrights activist, are shot to death inside city hall by former supervisor Dan White.
1983 — A Colombian Boeing 747 of Avianca
Airlines crashes near Barajas Airport in Madrid, killing 181 people.
1990 — Following the resignation of Margaret Thatcher, John Major is named leader of Britain’s Conservative Party and is appointed prime minister the next day.
1999 — Leader of the Labour Party since December 1993, Helen Clark becomes New Zealand’s first female elected prime minister. History is also made in the traditional rightleaning Wairarapa electorate when transsexual Georgina Beyer (Labour), becomes the world’s first transsexual member of Parliament, defeating National candidate Paul Henry by more than 3000 votes.
2005 — Chechens vote in their first parliamentary elections since Russia sent troops back to the Caucasus region six years earlier.
2009 — Star golfer Tiger Woods is slightly injured in an earlymorning car accident outside his mansion; the start of one of the swiftest descents in public esteem for a major celebrity after reports emerge of serial marital infidelity, leading to a divorce from his Swedish wife Elin Nordegren. 2015 — The first daynight cricket test match starts at the Adelaide Oval between New Zealand and Australia. The match is played with a pink ball and is marred by a crucial decision by television umpire Nigel Llong, who failed to rule that Australian tailender Nathan Lyon’s bat had made contact with the ball, ruling him not out.
Today’s birthdays:
Anders Celsius, Swedish astronomer and inventor of the Celsius scale (17011744); Jimi Hendrix, US rock guitarist (19421970); Kathryn Bigelow, US writerdirector (1951); Daryl Stuermer, US guitarist (1952); Curtis Armstrong, US actor (1953); Patricia McPherson, US actress (1954); Kimmy Robertson, US actress (1954); Caroline KennedySchlossberg, US attorney (1957); Charlie Burchill, Scottish guitarist (1959); Robin Givens, US actress (1964).
Quote from history:
‘‘Critics? I love every bone in their heads.’’ —
Eugene O’Neill, playwright and first American winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who died on November 27, 1953.