Today in history
Today is Wednesday, December 12, the 346th day of 2018. There are 19 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1769 — Frenchman JeanFrancoisMarie de Surville, on a trading expedition looking for rich lands in the Pacific, sights the west coast of the North Island from his vessel the St JeanBaptiste. It is a little more than two months after Cook’s discovery, and both continue to circumnavigate New Zealand at the same time, unaware of each other’s presence.
1792 — Ludwig van Beethoven, aged 22 and newly arrived in Vienna, notes in his diary he has 15 ducats: enough for his first music lesson with Franz Joseph Haydn.
1817 — Three of the crew of the brig Sophia are massacred at Murdering Beach, near the Otago Heads.
1861 — New premises are found in Princes St to publish the Otago Daily Times, replacing those in Stafford St.
1896 — Guglielmo Marconi gives the first public demonstration of wireless communication across a room in London.
1913 — Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Mona Lisa is recovered in Florence, two years after its theft from the Louvre in Paris.
1915 — The first allmetal plane, known as the
Tin Donkey, flies for the first time.
1946 — A United Nations committee votes to accept a sixblock tract of Manhattan real estate, offered as a gift by John D. Rockefeller jun, to be the site of the United Nations’ headquarters. 1954 — Dr John William Saunders, the resident medical officer at Dunedin Public Hospital, is fatally shot by his estranged girlfriend, house surgeon Dr Senga Florence Whittingham, who is later found guilty of manslaughter.
1955 — The first prototype of the hovercraft is patented by British engineer Christopher Cockerell.
1957 — Walter Nash (Labour) becomes New Zealand’s oldest prime minister when he takes office at the age of 75.
1959 — Bruce McLaren becomes the first New Zealander to win a Grand Prix when he wins the United States event at Sebring. At age 22, he became the youngest winner of a Formula One Grand Prix.
1960 — Keith Jacka Holyoake (National) takes office for a second time as New Zealand prime minister. The country’s secondlongestserving prime minister remains in office until February 1972.
1975 — Robert David Muldoon (National) takes office as New Zealand prime minister. A believer in market intervention and a fierce political adversary, he holds office until a heavy election defeat in July 1984.
— A group of generals, led by Majorgeneral Chun Doohwan, stages an army coup in South Korea and seizes power; the Port of Tumaco, Colombia, is hit by an earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale. Six hundred die and 80,000 are left homeless.
1985 — The opening of Ohau C power station marks the completion of the Upper Waitaki power scheme.
1990 — Former member of Parliament Dame Catherine Tizard takes office as New Zealand’s first female GovernorGeneral.
1991 — Boris Yeltsin wins landslide approval in the Russian legislature for his new Commonwealth of Independent States.
2012 — Courts Minister Chester Borrows confirms registry offices in Oamaru and Balclutha will close in March as both venues had been downgraded to hearingonly courts in November 2011, a move that would also be imposed on another seven courts nationally.
— Bill English becomes New Zealand’s 39th prime minister, following the official resignation of John Key; two men die when their small P750 topdressing aircraft strikes highvoltage powerlines in rural Hangaroa, southwest of Gisborne, cutting power to the city for two days.
Today’s birthdays:
Joe Bootham, New Zealand painter (19111986); Frank Sinatra, US singer/actor (19151998); Alan (Al) Deere, New Zealand Spitfire pilot in World War 2 and author (19171995); Connie Francis, US singer (1938); Dionne Warwick, US singer (1940); Sheree J. Wilson, US actress (1958); Toni Hodgkinson, New Zealand international middledistance runner (1971); Jennifer Connelly, actress (1975); Steve Devine, All Black (1976); Andrew Barron, New Zealand football international (1980); Jarrad Hoeata, All Black (1983); Isaac John, New Zealand rugby league international (1988).
Thought for today:
‘‘There are two cardinal sins from which all the others spring: impatience and laziness.’’ — Franz Kafka, Czech author (18831924).