Today in history
Today is Wednesday, May 2, the 122nd day of 2018. There are 243 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1519 — Artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci dies,
aged 67, in a chateau in Amboise, France.
1536 — England’s Queen Anne Boleyn is sent to the Tower of London, where she is later beheaded.
1839 — The first prospectus of the New Zealand Company is published in London. It is the vision of the company to profit by settling British people in New Zealand, as proposed by
Edward Gibbon Wakefield.
1858 — Potatau Te Wherowhero is crowned Potatau, the first Maori king. He had been chosen, because of his ancestry and mana, at a meeting at Pukawa in November 1856.
1863 — US Confederate general Thomas ‘‘Stonewall’’ Jackson is accidentally fatally wounded by his own men at Chancellorsville, Virginia.
1889 — The Earl of Onslow assumes office as New Zealand governor. Remaining in office until February 1892, he is best remembered for his disputes with Premier
John Ballance.
1907 — The first use of Waipori electricity is for
lighting in Dunedin.
1929 — New Zealand snooker player E.J. (Murt) O’Donoghue becomes the first player to clear the table from a break in competition, while playing in a tournament in Auckland.
1935 — New Zealand’s first ‘‘talkie’’ feature film,
Down on the Farm, premieres at the Empire De Luxe Theatre (later the St James and now the Rialto) in Moray Pl, Dunedin.
1940 — In World War 2, the second echelon of 2NZEF, including 28 (Maori) Battalion, departs from Wellington.
1945 — The Russian victory in the Battle of Berlin
signals the end of World War 2 in Europe.
1951 — A procession in Wellington of striking waterside workers clashes with police, who use their batons when strikers attempt to break through a police cordon at the corner of Cuba and Dixon sts.
1953 — Jordan’s King Hussein ascends the throne,
by the Islamic calendar, on his 18th birthday.
1957 — Death of controversial US senator Joseph
McCarthy.
1964 — The last scheduled tram service in New Zealand takes place in Wellington on the Thorndon to Newtown route.
1965 — The first satellite television programme
links nine countries and over 300 million viewers.
1972 — Death of J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI for 48 years.
1974 — Former US vicepresident Spiro Agnew is disbarred by the Maryland Court of Appeals, effectively preventing him from practising law anywhere in the United States.
1982 — The Argentine cruiser General Belgrano is sunk by a British submarine, killing 368 Argentine sailors. It is the worst single death toll of the 10week war over possession of the Falkland Islands.
1990 — The African National Congress and the South African Government open three days of negotiations in Cape Town on gradually ending white rule in South Africa.
1996 — Prime Minister Jim Bolger announces details of a New Zealandbased honours system, replacing the traditional British orders. 1997 — Tony Blair becomes Britain’s youngest prime minister in 185 years after his Labour Party crushes John Major’s longreigning Conservatives in a landslide.
1999 — Yugoslav authorities hand over to the Rev Jesse Jackson three American prisoners of war, who were held for a month; Mireya Moscoso becomes the first woman to win Panama’s presidential election.
Today’s birthdays:
Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia (172996); Sir George Maurice O’Rorke, New Zealand politician (18301916); Baron Manfred von Richthofen, World War 1 German fighter ace (18921918); Dr Benjamin Spock, US author/paediatrician (190398);
Engelbert Humperdinck, British singer (1936); Bianca Jagger, Nicaraguan actress and socialite (1945); Larry Gatlin, US singersongwriter (1948); Donatella Versace, Italian fashion designer (1955); Brian Lara, West Indies cricketer (1969);
Murray Burdan, New Zealand representative swimmer (1975); David Beckham, English footballer (1975); Emily Hart, American actress (1986).
Thought for today:
What experience and history teach is this: that people and governments have never learnt anything from history. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, German philosopher (17701831).