Today in history
Today is Wednesday, June 6, the 157th day of 2018. There are 208 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1844 — The Young Men’s Christian Association
(YMCA) is founded in London.
1872 — American feminist Susan B. Anthony is fined for trying to vote in a local election. She refuses to pay the fine.
1876 — James Speight of Rattray St, Dunedin, is
awarded a brewer’s licence.
1908 — First fiveeighth Billy Stead (Southland) captains the All Blacks in the first test match to be played at Carisbrook, Dunedin, with the All Blacks defeating the Anglo Welsh 325 before a crowd of 23,000.
1925 — Walter Chrysler founds Chrysler
Corporation.
1933 — The first drivein cinema opens in Camden, New Jersey. A showing of Wife Beware had room for 400 cars.
1942 — The Battle of Midway, the first decisive defeat inflicted by the United States on Japan in World War 2, ends.
1944 — Operation Overlord, the landing of Allied forces on the coast of Normandy, France, takes place. Better known as DDay, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history.
1949 — Nineteen Eightyfour, British writer
George Orwell’s vision of a world ruled by Big Brother, is published.
1967 — Egypt closes the Suez Canal during the sixday ArabIsraeli War. It remains closed to international shipping for eight years. 1968 — US senator Robert Kennedy dies at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles the day after he was shot in a hotel.
1969 — Although banned in Australia, New
Zealand’s chief film censor, Douglas McIntosh, rules the film version of James Joyce’s Ulysses can be shown, but only to segregated audiences 18 years and over. In theatres, this means separating men from women by whatever means possible.
1976 — The Soweto uprising begins, when students protesting being taught in Afrikaans are shot dead by police.
1977 — In New Plymouth, traffic officer Barry Gibson stops a car being driven by Murray Morgan Gillespie, who for no apparent reason assaults the officer, severely concussing him. Gibson never regains consciousness and dies a week later. Gillespie is convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.
1980 — Some 15 stranded people are evacuated from the White House Hotel at Henley when floodwater reaches the windowsills.
1981 — In the world’s worst rail disaster, seven coaches of an overcrowded passenger train derail on a bridge and plunge into the River Kosi, in Bihar, India. At least 800 people are killed.
1985 — Hundreds of people watch in horror as Kevin David Fox (32) shoots his wife and is fatally wounded by police in Gore’s main street just after lunchtime.
2011 — Christchurch is hit by a series of 19 tremors in a 12hour period. The largest, of 5.5 magnitude, centred near Rolleston at a depth of 15km, prompted fears of a repeat of the September and February events. There were no reports of injuries, but shopping on Queen’s Birthday Monday was interrupted as staff cleaned up and restocked shelves; Shrek, the hermit sheep who became a household identity throughout New Zealand, dies at Bendigo Station aged 16.
2012 — The Canterbury region is hit by a polar blast,
blanketing Christchurch with snowfalls of up to 10cm near the coast and up to a metre in high country areas. Schools, shopping centres and the airport are closed and power is cut to many areas.