Today in history
Today is Saturday, March 23, the 82nd day of 2018. There are 283 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1324 — Louis IV, emperor of Germany, is
excommunicated by Pope John XXII.
1534 — Pope Clement VII declares valid the marriage of England’s King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon.
1775 — United States statesman Patrick Henry makes a plea for American freedom from Britain, declaring, ‘‘Give me liberty or give me death’’.
1827 — Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s trial for the abduction of 15yearold Ellen Turner, whom he married, begins. Wakefield is later sentenced to three years in jail.
1848 — John Wickliffe, the first of the Otago Association’s immigrant ships, arrives at Port Chalmers. The mostly Scottish settlers have arrived after a passage lasting 116 days, in an attempt to escape economic depression and a traumatic split between the Church of Scotland and Free Church Presbyterians.
1852 — The first presiding provincial government in
the Otago and Southland area is formed.
1866 — Although Cobb and Co had already run its first service on the route, the coach road from Christchurch to Hokitika, crossing Arthurs Pass, is officially opened. Construction took less than a year in atrocious conditions.
1883 — The Mornington cablecar line opens. It covered 1.6km up High St to Mornington and ceased operations on March 2, 1957.
1898 — The Otago Jubilee Industrial Exhibition opens.
1905 — The Queen Victoria memorial statue is unveiled in Dunedin.
1910 — Lord Plunket officially opens the Hocken Library in Dunedin. Thomas Hocken, the library’s benefactor, is too ill to attend and dies two months later.
1912 — The foundation stone of the new Parliament House in Wellington is laid by Governor Lord Islington. The building, planned to be 120m long and designed by John Campbell and Claude Paton, will not be completed as envisaged.
1925 — The American state of Tennessee bans the teaching of evolution in schools; teacher
John Scopes ignores the ban and is prosecuted later in what becomes known as the Monkey Trial.
1942 — The forced relocation of Japanese Americans to inland concentration camps during WW2 begins.
1966 — The Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsay, meets Pope Paul VI in Rome, the first meeting between the heads of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches for 400 years.
1972 — A jury in Auckland throws out an indecency case against the musical show Hair. Publicity surrounding the case ensured a sellout season for the show.
1977 — One person is killed when a Wellington to Auckland freight train collides with an Auckland suburban train near the Parnell Tunnel.
1983 — Dr Barney Clark dies in the US 112 days after being the first person to receive an artificial heart; US president Ronald Reagan announces plans for a new spacebased defence system later dubbed ‘‘Star Wars’’.
1998 — President Boris Yeltsin fires his prime minister and the entire Cabinet in Russia’s biggest government shakeup since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
2006 — South African Mike Horn and Norwegian
Borge Ousland become the first men to ski across the frozen Arctic Ocean, completing a 1000km expedition from northern Siberia to the North Pole.
2010 — Closed in 1995, Tapanui Hospital is
demolished.
Today’s birthdays:
Michael Joseph Savage, prime minister of New Zealand’s first
Labour government (18721940);
Charles Elworthy, New Zealandborn
Marshal of the Royal Air Force
(19111993); Wernher von Braun,
Germanborn rocket expert
(19121977); Allan Hubbard, New
Zealand businessman (19282011); Roger Bannister, UK athlete, first to run a subfourminute mile (19292018); Brian Hastings, New Zealand cricketer (1940); Mike Riddell, New Zealand writer (1953); Lloyd Jones, New Zealand author (1955);
Amanda Plummer, British actress (1957);
Craig Green, All Black (1961); John Mitchell, former All Black coach (1964); Simon Barnett, New Zealand radio host and television presenter (1967); Keri Russell, US actress (1976); Nicholle Tom, US actress (1978); Princess Eugenie of York (1990).
Thought for today:
In human relations, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths. — Graham Greene (19041991).
ODT and agencies