Today in history
Today is Monday, April 16, the 106th day of 2018. There are 259 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1746 — The Duke of Cumberland’s forces defeat the Jacobite Scots at the Battle of Culloden, near Inverness, Scotland. The Scots lose over 1000 men and most of the remaining are massacred.
1879 — Death of Bernadette Soubirous, St Bernadette of Lourdes whose visions of the Virgin Mary led to the foundation of the shrine of Lourdes in France.
1892 — At a meeting in Wellington, the New Zealand Rugby Football Union is founded, despite Otago and Canterbury withdrawing support.
1897 — The Tutaekuri River in Hawkes Bay breaks its banks. Subsequent flooding causes 12 men to drown, 10 of whom are swept away in rescue attempts.
1908 — A new factory for the manufacture of the medicament Lane’s Creosoted Emulsion is opened in Oamaru’s Harbour St. The factory remained in operation until government regulations forced its closure in 1984.
1912 — Harriet Quimby, the first American woman to gain a pilot’s licence, becomes the first female to fly an aircraft across the Channel from England to France.
1922 — The Treaty of Rapallo between Germany and the Soviet Union recognises the Soviet Union as a ‘‘great power’’ and leads to the resumption of diplomatic and trade relations.
1947 — A French freighter with a cargo of nitrate
fertiliser explodes at Texas City, Texas, killing more than 500 people and destroying most of the town’s business district.
1951 — The British submarine Affray sinks in the English Channel, with the loss of 75 lives.
1953 — The British Royal Yacht Britannia is launched, just months before Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.
1964 — Nine men receive sentences of between 25 and 30 years for their part in Britain’s 1963 Great Train Robbery.
1970 — An alpine avalanche plunges onto a children’s sanatorium at Sallanches, France, killing 72 people.
1973 — Arthur Allan Thomas is convicted for a second time of the murders of Harvey and Jeanette Crewe, and again sentenced to life imprisonment. He is later pardoned and paid compensation.
1982 — Queen Elizabeth II proclaims Canada’s new constitution, severing the last colonial links with Britain.
1996 — Prince Andrew of Britain and his wife, Sarah Ferguson, announce they are to divorce after 10 years of marriage; an Italian court finds disgraced former prime minister Bettino Craxi guilty on further charges of corruption and sentences him to prison.
1998 — The International Monetary Fund adopts a ‘‘code of good practices’’ aimed at providing more information on the financial health of individual countries as the first step in averting future currency crises.
2010 — Thick drifts of volcanic ash blanket parts of rural Iceland as a vast invisible plume of grit drifts over Europe, emptying the skies of planes and sending hundreds of thousands in search of hotel rooms, train tickets or rental cars.
2011 — Christchurch is battered, once again, by a powerful 5.3magnitude earthquake, which struck the city at 5.49pm, followed by a series of aftershocks, the largest measuring 4.1.
2013 — The fishing boat Lady Anna rolls in heavy seas on the Greymouth bar, resulting in the loss of the boat’s skipper. The two crew cling to a flotation device and make it safely to shore; a family fishing trip in the Hauraki Gulf almost has tragic consequences when their boat sinks in rough weather. All seven people on board are rescued from the ‘‘furious swells’’.
2016 — Formed in 1939, the New Zealand Scottish Regiment has its final parade in Princes St, Dunedin. Its colours presented to Toitu Otago Settlers Museum for safekeeping.