Today in history
Today is Wednesday, May 9, the 129th day of 2018. There are 236 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1502 — Christopher Columbus sets out from Cadiz, Spain, on his fourth and last voyage to the western hemisphere.
1671 — Thomas Blood, the Irish adventurer better known as Captain Blood, steals the crown jewels from the Tower of London.
1785 — British inventor Joseph Bramah patents
the beerpump handle.
1832 — The foundations are laid for the stone store at Kerikeri. The building, which is New Zealand’s oldest commercial building, was completed in 1836.
1863 — New Zealand’s first gas streetlights are lit in Dunedin by the Dunedin Gas Light and Coke Company
1877 — Romania proclaims its independence from the Turks just one month after it allied with Tsarist Russia to fight the Ottoman Empire.
1915 — Turkish forces are repulsed in an attack on Anzacs at Gallipoli at a cost of 7000 men. The Anzacs lose 500.
1921 — George Bolt makes a flight in an Avro floatplane to begin New Zealand’s first airmail service. The sixdayaweek service between Auckland and Whangarei soon became uneconomic and ended.
1926 — US navy commander Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett become the first people to make a plane flight over the North Pole.
1788 — Britain passes a parliamentary motion to reduce overcrowding on slave ships.
1936 — Italy annexes Ethiopia, and King Victor Emmanuel III is proclaimed emperor.
1940 — The British begin nighttime bombing raids on German cities.
1945 — An estimated 7000 people assemble in Dunedin’s Octagon and surrounding streets to take part in a civic thanksgiving service to mark the end of the war in Europe; Germany’s Field Marshal Keitel signs the final surrender documents at the end of World War 2.
1946 — King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy abdicates and the monarchy is replaced by a republic.
1955 — West Germany is admitted as a member
of Nato.
1960 — The United States becomes the first
country to legalise the birth control pill.
1967 — India’s vicepresident, Zakir Hussain, is named president of India, becoming the first Muslim to hold that office.
— The bulletriddled body of Italy’s former prime minister, Aldo Moro, is found in a parked car in central Rome, 54 days after his abduction by Red Brigades terrorists.
1980 — Thirtyfive motorists are killed when a Liberian freighter rams the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay, Florida, causing a 400metre section to collapse.
1987 — A Polish jetliner bound for New York crashes into a forest outside Warsaw, killing all 183 people aboard.
1991 — William Kennedy Smith, nephew of
Edward Kennedy, is charged with rape.
1993 — Paraguay holds its first presidential and
parliamentary elections in almost 50 years.
1994 — South Africa’s newly elected parliament chooses Nelson Mandela to be the country’s first black president.
1996 — The South African National Party, which imposed apartheid and then helped break it, decides to quit President Nelson Mandela’s twoyearold government of national unity. 2001 — A total of 126 people die after a stampede at Accra’s main football stadium when police fire teargas at rioting fans.
Today’s birthdays:
John Brown, US slavery abolitionist (180059); Frederick Weld, former New Zealand premier (182391); Sir James Barrie, English dramatist (18601937); Howard Carter, British archaeologist (18731939); Robin Cooke, Baron Cooke of Thorndon, British law lord (19262006); Albert Finney, English actor (1936); Glenda Jackson, English actress turned politician (1936); Sonny Curtis, US musician and songwriter (1937); James L. Brooks, US film producerdirector (1940); Candice Bergen, US actress (1946); Marilyn (Joy) Quigley, former NZ politician (1948); Billy Joel, US pop singer
(1949); Andrew Jones, NZ cricketer (1959); AnnaLouise Plowman (Stephens), NZborn actress (1972); Shane van Gisbergen, NZ carracing driver (1989).
Thought for today
Television has changed the American child from an irresistible force into an immovable object. — Laurence J. Peter, Canadianborn educator (191990).