today in history
TODAY is Monday, October 26, the 300th day of 2020. There are 66 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1861 — The Pony Express, a mail service delivering messages, newspapers, and mail using relays of horsemounted riders between Missouri and California, in the United States, ends after just under 19 months of operation when replaced by the telegraph.
1863 — Albert Pomare is the first Maori to be born in England. Queen Victoria becomes his godmother; the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce opens; an international conference begins in Geneva aimed at improving medical conditions on battlefields, heralding the beginning of the Red Cross.
1866 — The Tuapeka Jockey Club is formed. 1876 — The Dunedin to Ocean Beach Railway is opened.
1942 — The Women Jurors Act comes into effect, but New Zealand women do not sit on juries until almost a year later, when New Zealand’s first female juror was Elaine Kingsford, who sat on a case in the Auckland Supreme Court.
1956 — The Otago Daily Times receives its first wire photo.
1971 — The last regular maintrunk service by a steam locomotive in New Zealand has its final run. 1976 — The Minister of Works and Development breaks ground on the Maniototo Irrigation Scheme, 80 years after it was first proposed.
1977 — Twotime New Zealand prime minister Sir
Keith Holyoake becomes governorgeneral.
1985 — The Mutijuli Aboriginal community is granted freehold title to Ayers Rock and Uluru National Park in the Northern Territory.
1994 — Israel and Jordan sign a treaty after 46 years of hostility.
1995 — Russian president Boris Yeltsin is admitted to hospital in Moscow with an apparent heart attack, the second in four months.
1996— As eastern Zaire slides into chaos, the United Nations evacuates aid workers from a camp in Bukavu, leaving half a million Hutu refugees from Rwanda to fend for themselves.
1999 — Britain’s House of Lords votes to end the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in Britain’s upper chamber of Parliament.
2002 — At least 120 of at least 700 hostages are killed when Russian special forces storm a Moscow theatre at dawn after pumping a powerful narcotic gas into the building to end a threeday siege by Chechen rebels. Only two died of gunshot wounds, the rest by gas poisoning. Some 40 guerrillas were also killed.
2011 — Ground movement is believed to be the cause of a 13cm crack in the damaged Maui pipeline 2.5m underground in rural Taranaki, forcing milk to be dumped and all gasreliant businesses to cease operating.
Today’s birthdays:
Mary Lambie, New Zealand nurse (18891971); Bill Fell, New Zealand policeman (190486); Jack Macdonald, New Zealand rower (190782); Ian Middleton, New Zealand author (19282007); Barry Brickell, New Zealand potter and founder of Driving Creek Railway (19352016); Jaclyn Smith, US actress (1945); Keith Hopwood, English musician (1946); John McEldowney, All Black (19472012); Hillary Rodham Clinton, US politician (1947); Alan Duff, New Zealand author (1950); Andy Haden, All Black (19502020); Keith Strickland, US musician (1953); Rita Wilson, US actress/singer/songwriter (1956); Brian Bovell, English actor (1959); Natalie Merchant, US singer (1963); Tom Cavanagh, Canadian actor (1963); Ken Rutherford, New Zealand cricket captain (1965); Keith Urban, New Zealandborn country singer (1967); Jan Logie, New Zealand politician (1969); Seth MacFarlane, US actor (1973); Emilia Clarke, English actress (1986); Julian Dennison, New Zealand actor (2002).
Quote of the day:
‘‘It is easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing, that’s the Lord’s test.’’ — Mahalia Jackson, US gospel singer, who was born on this day in
1911. She died in 1972, aged 60.