Today in history
Today is Saturday, April 7, the 97th day of 2018. There are 268 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1348 — Prague University, the first in central
Europe, is founded by Charles IV of Bohemia.
1652 — Jan van Riebeeck, representing the Dutch East India Company, arrives in Table Bay to build the first colonial settlement in what became South Africa.
1739 — Dick Turpin, the legendary English
highwayman, is hanged for murder at York.
1823 — French forces under Louis de Bourbon invade Spain, beginning the FrancoSpanish War.
1927 — An audience in New York sees an image of commerce secretary Herbert Hoover in Washington in the first successful longdistance demonstration of television.
1933 — A purge of Jews, socialists and democrats in public office begins in Germany, where the Nazis came to power a month earlier.
1936 — The Cape Parliament passes the Native Representation Bill, permitting natives to elect three Europeans to represent them in the Union Parliament in South Africa.
1948 — The World Health Organisation is founded.
1949 — The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical
South Pacific opens on Broadway.
1956 — A declaration signed by Morocco and
Spain recognises the independence of Morocco.
1962 — Dunedin’s RSA building is badly damaged
by fire.
1963 — Yugoslavia is renamed the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, with Marshal
Josip Tito as its president for life.
1966 — A United States hydrogen bomb lost from a bomber is recovered in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain.
1969 — The US Supreme Court unanimously strikes down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.
1976 — After unprecedented riots in Beijing, China’s deputy prime minister, Deng Xiaoping, is deposed and Hua Guofeng named prime minister.
1977 — Brian Edwards introduces the first episode
of Fair Go.
1990 — China enters the satellitelaunching business by putting a USmade telecommunications satellite into orbit; former US national security adviser John Poindexter is convicted of conspiracy, obstruction and lying in the IranContra scandal.
1993 — Macedonia, a former republic of
Yugoslavia, is allowed to enter the United Nations after a compromise with Greece over the name of the country.
1994 — Rampaging troops kill Rwanda’s acting prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, and 11 Belgian United Nations soldiers.
1998 — The Nationalled government announces plans to split stateowned electricity generator ECNZ in three, stating erroneously that as a result energy prices could fall by as much as 20%.
2001 — Nasa launches the Mars Odyssey from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, on a $US297million mission to search for water on Mars.
2008 — A landmark freetrade agreement between New Zealand and China is signed at a ceremony in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
2010 — Sculptor Regan Gentry defends his controversial Harbour Mouth Molars sculpture being installed on Portsmouth Dr, after many Dunedin residents thought the $45,000 work was an April Fools’ Day joke.
2014 — The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge,
Prince William and his wife Kate, along with 9monthold son George, arrive in Wellington at the start of a royal tour.