TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Thursday, January 7, the seventh day of 2021. There are 358 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1610 — Galileo Galilei, Italian physicist, mathematician and astronomer (15641642), discovers four of Jupiter’s moons.
1782 — The first American commercial bank, the Bank of North America, opens in Philadelphia.
1785 — Dr John Jeffries and Jean Pierre Blanchard make the first crossing of the English Channel in a hotair balloon.
1849 — The founder of Dunedin suburbs Forbury and Caversham, Judge William Henry Valpy, arrives in Dunedin with his wife and five of his children on board Ajax.
1885 — In what is the first national expression of organised labour in New Zealand, the first Trades and Labour Congress begins in Dunedin.
1894 — In an early motionpicture experiment, comedian Fred Ott is filmed sneezing at the Thomas Edison studios in New Jersey.
1904 — The shipping distress call CQD (‘‘seek you, danger’’) is introduced; it was replaced by SOS two years later.
1927 — The first official transatlantic telephone call is made when W.S. Gifford, president of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, calls Sir Evelyn P. Murray, secretary of the General Post Office of Great Britain.
1928 — Flooding of the River Thames causes 14 people to lose their lives and causes extensive damage to much of riverside area of London.
1931 — Australian Guy Menzies completes the first transtasman solo flight. Crossing from Sydney, his journey, that lasted 11hr 45min, finished dramatically at Harihari, on the South Island’s West Coast, when his plane landed in a swamp and flipped.
1935 — Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini and French foreign minister Pierre Laval sign the FrancoItalian Agreement.
1948 — The State Forest Service (which becomes the New Zealand Forest Service in 1949) announces that a sawmill will be built at Conical Hills, near Tapanui.
1953 — United States president Harry Truman announces that America has developed a hydrogen bomb.
1954 — Knows as the GeorgetownIBM experiment, the first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held at the head office of IBM in New York.
1956 — Indian batsmen Vinoo Mankad (231) and Pankaj Roy (173) complete a test record firstwicket stand of 413 in the second test against New Zealand in Madras.
1970 — Farmers sue Max Yasgur, the owner of the dairy farm in Bethel, New York, at which the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was held between August 15 and August 18, 1969, for $35,000 in damages to neighbouring properties caused by the Woodstock concert.
1979 — Vietnamese forces capture the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge government.
1990 — The Leaning Tower of Pisa is closed to tourists for the first time in its 800year history for restoration work.
2000 — An exhausted 14yearold Tibetan Buddhist leader reaches India after trekking across the snowy Himalayas, a defection that embarrasses Chinese leaders who used him as a symbol of their rule over Tibet.
2001 — A general practitioner in Manchester, England, may have killed more than 260 patients over almost 24 years, a clinical study of Dr Harold Shipman’s medical practice shows. He is sentenced to life in prison for the deaths of 15 patients.
2012 — A hotair balloon pilot and 10 passengers are killed when the craft becomes trapped in power lines before bursting into flames near Carterton; the stricken cargo vessel Rena, which became grounded on the Astrolabe Reef, off the coast of Tauranga, on October 5, breaks in two during 6m swells, spilling its remaining containers into the sea and creating further environmental concerns.
2015 — Two gunmen forced their way into the Paris headquarters of the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo and open fire, killing 12 and wounding 11 others.
2019 — Valued at $US797 billion, Amazon becomes the world’s most valuable listed company.
Today’s birthdays:
Alexander William Bickerton, English born New Zealand physicist/chemist (18421929); Frederick de Jersey Clere, New Zealand architect (18561952); Edgar Percy Blamires, Methodist minister/ community leader (18781967); Bill Airey, New Zealand university professor/peace activist (18971968); Mary Batchelor,
New Zealand trade unionist/politician (19272009); Denis Pain, New Zealand jurist/sports administrator (19362019); Kenny Loggins, US singer (1948); Judith Baragwanath, New Zealand writer/satirist (1951); David Caruso, US actor (1956); Linda Kozlowski, US actress (1958); Ross Norman, New Zealand squash player (1959); Nicolas Cage, US actor (1964); Jeremy Renner, US actor (1971); Rob Waddell, New Zealand rower/yachtsman (1975); Alethea Boon, New Zealand gymnast/weightlifter (1984); Lewis Hamilton, English Formula One driver (1985); Michael McGlinchey, New Zealand footballer (1987); Haley Bennett, US actress (1988).
Quote of the day:
‘‘A naked woman in heels is a beautiful thing. A naked man in shoes looks like a fool.’’ — Christian Louboutin, French fashion designer, who was born on this day in 1963.