TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Thursday, July 9, the 191st day of 2020. There are 175 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1540 — The sixmonth marriage of England’s King Henry VIII to Anne of Cleves is annulled.
1816 — Argentina declares independence from
Spain.
1863 — Governor George Grey orders all Maori living between Auckland and the Waikato to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown or retreat south of the Mangatawhiri River.
1877 — The first Wimbledon tennis championships are held.
1887 — The first paper napkins are introduced at a dinner at a British hotel by John Dickenson, a stationerymanufacturer.
1890 — A forerunner of the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind, the Jubilee Institute for the Blind is formed in Auckland.
1893 — Physician Daniel Hale Williams performs the world’s first successful closure of a heart wound in a Chicago hospital.
1917 — The British battleship HMS Vanguard explodes at Scapa Flow (caused by an internal explosion of faulty cordite), killing 843 of the 845 men aboard.
1918 — The secondworst train crash in US history occurs in Nashville, Tennessee, when two passenger trains collide headon, causing the deaths of at least 101 people and injuring an additional 171.
1947 — The engagement of England’s Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten (Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark) is announced.
1971 — Henry Kissinger visits the People’s Republic of China to negotiate a detente between the US and China.
1982 — A Pan Am Boeing 727 crashes in Kenner, Louisiana, killing all 146 people aboard and eight people on the ground.
1986 — The Homosexual Law Reform Bill passes a third reading in Parliament. When enacted in August, it will no longer be against the law for males over 16 years old to indulge in consensual male homosexual practices in New Zealand.
1989 — Carlos Menem is sworn in, the first time in 60 years that a civilian president has succeeded another in Argentina.
1991 — The International Olympic Committee readmits South Africa after three decades of exclusion.
1993 — British scientists using DNA geneticfingerprinting tests, identify the bones of Russian Tsar Nicholas II and other members of the Russian royal family.
1994 — Fullback Shane Howarth kicks five penalty goals and a conversion to snap a threegame losing streak when the All Blacks beat South Africa 2214 at Carisbrook, before a crowd of 41,000.
1997 — The Nevada Athletic Commission revokes Mike Tyson’s boxing licence and fines him $US3 million for biting off part of Evander Holyfield’s ear in a title match.
2002 — The African Union (AU), Africa’s new political union, is launched by at least 40 of the continent’s 53 presidents and monarchs. It replaces the Organisation of African Unity. The first chairman is
Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa.
2005 — The British and Irish Lions suffer their first series whitewash in 22 years when beaten 3819 by the All Blacks in the third test at Auckland. In the other matches of the series, the All Blacks won 213 in Christchurch and 4818 in Wellington.