Today in history
Today is Tuesday, May 22, the 142nd day of 2018. There are 223 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1200 — The Peace of Le Goulet is signed, settling differences between King John of England and
King Philip II of France.
1455 — The opening battle in England’s 30year War of the Roses takes place at St Albans, when the Lancastrians defeat the Yorkists.
1629 — Denmark’s King Christian IV signs the Peace of Luebeck with the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, ending Denmark’s involvement in the Thirty Years’ War.
1819 — The hybrid sail and steampropelled vessel SS Savannah departs from Savannah, Georgia, on the first partly steampowered crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. It arrived in Liverpool on
June 20.
1865 — The first press telegram is sent from Bluff
to Dunedin.
1867 — Canada becomes the first dominion of the British Empire, gaining a parliament, a cabinet, and a large measure of independence.
1868 — In America’s Great Train Robbery, near Marshfield, Indiana, the Reno gang make off with $US96,000 in cash, gold and bonds.
1897 — The Blackwall Tunnel under the River
Thames is opened.
1903 — The Maori king, Mahuta Tawhiao Potatau Te Wherowhero, is appointed to the executive of the Legislative Council in exchange for his agreement to open up a million acres of land for settlement. He serves for six years, during which time the role of Maori king is entrusted to his younger brother.
1915 — Britain’s worst rail disaster occurs when up to 230 people die when a troop train collides with a passenger train at Quintinshill, near Gretna Green, Scotland.
1939 — Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini sign the Pact of Steel, a10year political and military alliance between Germany and Italy.
1946 — A Tuatapere to Invercargill mixed train rearends a stationary workers’ train at Makarewa, killing one person and injuring four others.
1954 — Three children are killed when a DC3 crashes at Raumati Beach after engine failure on its approach to Paraparaumu Airport.
1962 — The new Dunedin Airport is opened at Momona by the Minister in Charge of Civil Aviation, J. K. McAlpine.
1979 — Pierre Trudeau’s 11 years as Canadian
prime minister end with the Liberal Party’s defeat in a general election by the Progressive Conservative Party led by Joe Clark.
1981 — Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, is
jailed for life, convicted of 13 counts of murder. 1982 — HMS Ardent sinks, with the loss of 22
lives, during the Falklands War.
2000 — A panel of Israeli judges reinterprets a law and lifts the ban on women praying from the Torah scroll, the Jewish holy text, at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site. Previously a woman could face a sixmonth jail sentence for violating the ban.
2001 — In Afghanistan, the ruling Taliban militia announces a law requiring Hindus to wear identity labels to distinguish them from
Muslims. The measure also requires Hindu women to be veiled for the first time.
2003 — A manuscript of Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony sells for over £2 million.
2013 — New Zealand Police Commissioner Peter Marshall apologises following the release of a damning report from the Independent Police Conduct Authority on the Urewera raids in 2007, which resulted in the arrest of 18 people. The report stated the police acted ‘‘unlawfully, unjustifiably and unreasonably’’.
Today’s birthdays
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, English author (18591930); Laurence Olivier, English actor (19071989); Eric Petrie, New Zealand cricketer (19272004); Richard Benjamin ,US actordirector (1938); Barbara Parkins, Canadianborn actress (1942); George Best, Northern Irish soccer player (19462005); Iva Davies, Australian pop singer (1955); Gary Sweet, Australian actor (1957); Glen Adam, New Zealand international footballer (1959); Naomi Campbell, English model (1970); Jeremy Christie, New Zealand international footballer (1983); Novak Djokovic, Serbian tennis player (1987).
Quote from history:
‘‘Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.’’ — US president Richard Nixon in 1969. On May 22, 1972, Nixon became the first US president to visit Moscow.