Today in history
Today is Thursday, April 25, the 115th day of 2019. There are 250 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1507 — The New World is named America by Dutch mapmaker Martin Waldseemueller, who thought Amerigo Vespucci had discovered the continent.
1792 — Highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier becomes the first person under French law to be executed by guillotine.
1844 — New Zealand Company surveyor
Frederick Tuckett arrives in Otago seeking a site for the New Edinburgh settlement.
1850 — Paul Julius Reuter, founder of the news agency that bears his name, uses 40 pigeons to carry stockmarket prices between Brussels and Aachen.
1913 — The post office at Ravensbourne is opened.
1915 — The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps land at Gallipoli to find that the Royal Navy has put them ashore at the wrong place.
1916 — A wooden cross is erected on
Mt Maunsell (Tinui Taipo), 40km from Masterton. It is the world’s first permanent memorial to the Anzacs and will stand for 50 years, until it is replaced by an aluminium one.
1921 — New Zealand marks its first Anzac Day by the introduction of a public holiday. The poppy is adopted as the day’s official emblem a year later.
1938 — Flooding in Hawke’s Bay causes extensive damage and leaves the lower Esk Valley buried under metres of silt. 1942 — In the first United States counterattack of WW2, 16 bombers make a daring daylight raid on Tokyo.
1945 — The second New Zealand Division makes a successful crossing of the River Po in Italy, in World War 2; delegates of 45 nations meet in
San Francisco, to organise the United Nations; Soviet troops meet at the Elbe River in central Europe, dramatising the collapse of Nazi Germany.
1967 — Colorado becomes the first US state to legalise abortion. The law allowed therapeutic abortions if a threedoctor panel unanimously approved.
1972 — Film actor George Sanders, best known for playing suave characters, commits suicide. Sanders, who had said he did not want to live past the age of 65, was 65. He left a note reading, ‘‘Dear World: I am leaving because I am bored’’.
1974 — Portugal’s bloodless ‘‘Revolution of the
Carnations’’ ends 48 years of rightist dictatorship.
— A chartered Dan Air Boeing 727, being used to take British holidaymakers from Manchester to Tenerife, crashes into a mountain about 25km south of Los Rodeos Airport, killing all 146 passengers and crew.
1983 — A German magazine and a British newspaper publish what are thought to be the secret diaries of Adolf Hitler. They were later revealed to be frauds; Soviet leader Yuri
Andropov invites 10yearold Samantha Smith to visit his country after receiving a letter in which the US schoolgirl expressed fears about nuclear war. Smith died on August 25, 1985, aged 13, in a plane crash.
1990 — The Hubble space telescope is released from the space shuttle Discovery and orbits 480km above Earth.
1992 — An earthquake measuring 7.0 rocks
Northern California.
2006 — A rockfall in the Beaconsfield Gold Mine in
Tasmania kills miner Larry Knight and traps two workmates, Todd Russell and Brant Webb. Russell and Webb are found alive five days later and a transfixed nation waits until they are finally freed on May 9 after 14 days underground.
2012 — An Auckland vet is killed when former circus elephant Jumbo (renamed Mila) suffers a panic attack at Franklin Zoo and Wildlife Sanctuary at Tuakau, south of Auckland.
Today’s birthdays:
King Edward II of England (12841327); William Swainson, second attorneygeneral of the Crown Colony of New Zealand (18091884); Guglielmo Marconi, Italian radio pioneer (18741937); George Nepia, All Black (19051986); Ella Fitzgerald, US singer (19181996); Yvette Williams, New Zealand’s first female Olympic gold medallist (19292019); Al Pacino, US actor (1940); Bjorn Ulvaeus, Swedish musician (1945); Talia Shire, US actress (1946); Hank Azaria, US actor (1964); Renee Zellweger, US actress (1969); Nick Willis, New Zealand middledistance runner (1983).
Thought for today: