TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Tuesday, October 6, the 280th day of 2020. There are 86 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1470 — King Henry VI is released from the Tower of London.
1536 — English religious reformer and Bible translator William Tyndale is strangled at the stake (and his body then burned) as a heretic near Brussels on the orders of King Henry VIII.
1769 — The surgeon’s boy on the Endeavour,
Nicholas Young, sights the North Island of New Zealand. Captain Cook names the area Young Nick’s Head in his honour.
1789 — After marching to the Palace of Versailles the previous day, an angry mob of almost 7000 working women, armed with pitchforks, pikes and muskets, forces the royal family, and most of the French Assembly, to return with it to Paris.
1870 — The University of Otago opens; Southland rejoins the Otago Provincial Government.
1889 — The Moulin Rouge nightclub in Paris opens its doors to the public for the first time.
1900 — Dunedin’s Stuart St cable car line opens. Covering a distance of 1.9km, it closed in 1947.
1902 — A 3200km railway link between Johannesburg and Beira, Mozambique, is completed.
1906 — The 1.4km Elgin Rd cablecar extension begins operating from the Mornington
Cable Car House. The line closed in January 1910.
1919 — Constable Vivian Dudding is shot in the head while attending a domestic dispute in Thorndon, Wellington. The offender then turns the gun on himself, and both die later in hospital.
1927 — The Jazz Singer, a film starring Al Jolson, opens in New York. It is the first fulllength feature film to include spoken dialogue.
1928 — Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek becomes president of the Republic of China.
1949 — Tokyo Rose (Mrs Iva Toguri D’Aquino), who broadcast Japanese propaganda to United States forces in the Pacific during World War 2, is sentenced to 10 years’ jail and fined $US10,000 on treason charges.
1951 — The British High Commissioner in Malaya, Sir Henry Gurney, is assassinated by communist terrorists.
1958 — The US nuclear submarine USS Seawolf (SSN575) surfaces off the New England coast after establishing a world record by remaining submerged for two months.
1973 — War erupts in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria attack Israel during the Yom Kippur holiday.
1978 — Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian religious leader opposed to the shah, is granted asylum in France after being expelled from Iran.
1981 — Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat is assassinated by Muslim extremists while reviewing a military parade in Cairo.
1998 — In the Philippines, the Supreme Court overturns a 1993 court decision convicting Imelda Marcos of graft and sentencing her to 12 years’ jail.
1999 — Overwhelmed by rising waters on the Niger River, officials open the floodgates of two major dams, submerging 400 villages and leaving more than 300,000 homeless. About 500 are believed to have drowned.
2007 — The All Blacks lose their first test in Wales since December 1953, when they are eliminated from the Rugby World Cup in a quarterfinal match against France.
2008 — Wall Street joins a worldwide cascade of despair over the financial crisis, closing below 10,000 for the first time since 2004.
2011 — A former dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in Dunedin, Jonathan Kirkpatrick, is jailed for three years and two months for stealing more than $665,000 from his Auckland University of Technology employer to support his lavish lifestyle.
2015 — Trade Minister Tim Groser signs the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement.
Today’s birthdays:
Octavius Hadfield, New Zealand bishop (18141904); Ursula Bethell, New Zealand writer/poet (18741945); Marion Brown, New Zealand nurse (18801915); James Lloyd Findlay, New Zealand soldier and air force officer who served in both World Wars (18951983); Raoul Garrard, New Zealand cricketer (18971977); Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk, New Zealand poet (190397); Walter Reside, All Black (190585); Robin Andrew, New Zealand lawn bowls player (191285); Sir Michael Hardie Boys, New Zealand’s 17th GovernorGeneral (1931); Dryden Spring, New Zealand businessman (1939); John Nicholson, New Zealand motor racing driver (194117); Britt Ekland, Swedish actress (1942); Patsy Riggir, New Zealand singersongwriter (1945); Gerry Adams, Irish politician (1948); Kevin Cronin, US singer (1951); Elisabeth Shue, US actress (1963); Matthew Sweet, US singer (1964); Jacqueline Obradors, US actress (1966); Kirsten Hellier, New Zealand javelin thrower (1969); Ioan Gruffudd, Welsh actor (1973); Jeremy Sisto, US actor (1974); Andrew Keoghan, New Zealand musician/songwriter (1980); Valerie Adams, New Zealand Olympic goldmedalwinning shot putter (1984); Olivia Thirlby, US actress (1986); Salina Fisher, New Zealand composer/violinist (1993).