Today in history
Today is Thursday, March 26, the 86th day of 2020. There are 280 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1026 — Conrad II is crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope John XIX.
1804 — The United States Congress orders Native Americans to move west of the Mississippi River.
1828 — Austrian composer Franz Schubert gives his only public concert, in Vienna.
1867 — The ship Montgomery is wrecked near Napier.
1872 — US inventor Thomas J. Martin is awarded a patent for the fireextinguisher.
1881 — A meeting is held to form the Otago Rugby Football Union.
1885 — The Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co of Rochester, New York, manufactures the first commercial motionpicture film.
1896 — An explosion at the Brunner coal mine on the West Coast kills 67 men. The fatalities account for nearly half the workforce and it remains New Zealand’s worst mining accident.
1898 — The world’s first game reserve, the Sabi Game Reserve, is designated in South Africa.
1936 — New Zealand becomes the first country in the world to broadcast on radio a live debate from Parliament.
1938 — A weekend excursion train is derailed at Ratana, with the eventual loss of seven lives. 1942 — Nazi Germany begins sending Jews to the
Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. 1944 — The New Zealand Corps is disbanded, having suffered more than 200 dead and 100 missing in battle in its short sevenweek existence.
1945 — In World War 2, the Battle of Iwo Jima ends after about 21,000 Japanese are killed and about 6800 US troops killed.
1947 — A tsunami hits the east coast, with waves as high as 10m. Due to it striking an isolated area of New Zealand, there were no reports of any injuries.
1953 — US researcher Dr Jonas E. Salk announces
a new vaccine to immunise against polio.
1973 — Women are allowed on to the floor of the
London Stock Exchange for the first time.
1979 — The Camp David Treaty is signed by Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, the first peace treaty between an Arab country and the Jewish state.
1994 — Dame Whina Cooper, one of Maoridom’s
most inspirational leaders, dies aged 98.
1997 — The bodies of 39 members of the
Heaven’s Gate cult are found in a mansion at
Rancho Santa Fe, California, after their mass suicide. The cult preached that by committing suicide, members would leave their bodies behind and be picked up by alien spacecraft.
2000 — Pope John Paul II crowns his Holy Land sojourn with a gesture to Jews when he places a plea for forgiveness in a nook in the Western Wall, expressing sorrow over the past errors of his church.
2004 — United Nations secretarygeneral
Kofi Annan opens a memorial conference on the 1994 Rwanda genocide at the UN by accepting institutional and personal blame for the lack of response by world leaders to the genocide as it unfolded, resulting in an estimated 800,000 deaths over 100 days.
2007 — Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams, the leaders of Northern Ireland’s major Protestant and Catholic parties, open facetoface relations after four decades of conflict and announce a deal to create a powersharing administration.
2019 — A state of emergency is declared in
Westland when torrential rain strikes the region, causing widespread flooding and slips, and washes away the bridge over the Waiho River, closing the highway between Hokitika and Makarora. One person is downed when swept away by floodwaters. It is estimated that up to 800mm of rain fell in a 24hr period.
Today’s birthdays:
William (Bill) Massey, 19th prime minister of New Zealand (18561925); Alan Arkin, US actor (1934); James Caan, US actor (1940); Bob Woodward, US journalist (1943); Diana Ross, US singer (1944); John Rowles, New Zealand singer (1947); Steven Tyler, US singer (1948); Martin Short, US actor/comedian (1950); Jennifer Grey, US actress (1960); Glen Wilson, New Zealand squash coach and former professional player (1971); Leslie Mann, US actress (1972); Larry Page, US computer scentist (1973); Jeremy Stanley, All Black (1975); Ben Blair, All Black (1979);
Keira Knightley, English actress (1985).
Quote of the day:
‘‘I just love bossy women. I could be around them all day. To me, bossy is not a pejorative term at all. It means somebody’s passionate and engaged and ambitious and doesn’t mind learning.’’ —
Amy Poehler, US actress (1971).