TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Tuesday, January 12, the 12th day of 2021. There are 353 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1554 — Bayinnaung, who would go on to assemble what is thought to be the largest empire in the history of southeast Asia, is crowned King of Burma.
1598 — Pope Clement VIII seizes the Duchy of Ferrara in Italy.
1848 — A revolt starts in Palermo, Italy, against the corruption of the Bourbons.
1865 — The New Zealand Exhibition opens at the site of the present Dunedin Hospital. It has exhibits from all around the world, and attracts more than 31,000 visitors from all parts of the country.
1866 — The Royal Aeronautical Society is formed in London.
1872 — Permission is given for a dry dock at Port Chalmers.
1878 — An Australian cricket XI plays Otago (with 22 players). Otago scores 124 and 93, while Australia scores 92 in its only turn at bat before the game is drawn because of rain.
1881 — The world’s first telephone box, called ‘‘Fernesprecher kiosk’’, goes into service at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin. To use it, one had to buy paper tickets called Telefonbillet, which allowed a few minutes of talking time. In 1899 it was replaced by a coinoperated telephone.
1895 — The National Trust is founded in the United Kingdom.
1896 — The start of a 13day heatwave in Bourke, New South Wales, where the daily
average temperature was 47degC; 47 people died.
1911 — The University of the Philippines College of Law is formally established; three future Philippine presidents are among the first enrollees.
1915 — The United States House of Representatives rejects a proposal to give women the right to vote.
1918 — The Minnie Pit Disaster coal mining accident, in which 155 die, occurs in Halmer End, Staffordshire.
1932 — Mrs Hattie Caraway becomes the first elected female US senator.
1950 — A Swedish tanker strikes the British submarine HMS Truculent during the submarine’s trials in the River Thames. Only 15 of 70 men in the submarine survive.
1954 — Queen Elizabeth II opens a special session of Parliament to launch New Zealand’s centennial year of parliamentary government.
1958 — The Soviet Union proposes a zone free of nuclear weapons from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean.
1962 — Operation Chopper, the first American combat mission of the Vietnam War, takes place.
1964 — Rebels in Zanzibar begin a revolt known as the Zanzibar Revolution and proclaim a republic.
1966 — US president Lyndon B. Johnson says US forces should stay in South Vietnam until communist aggression there is ended.
1967 — China’s army pledges support to Mao TseTung during disorder triggered by the Chinese Cultural Revolution; US psychology professor Dr James Bedford becomes the first person to be cryonically preserved with the intent of future resuscitation.
1968 — The US and Cambodia agree on a policy to keep Cambodia out of the Vietnam War.
1974 — The North African nations of Libya and Tunisia announce agreement to merge as a new republic. The union never goes into
effect.
1976 — The coalition cabinet in Thailand collapses with resignation of prime minister Kukrit Pramoj.
1977 — US president Jimmy Carter defends Supreme Court decisions limiting government payments for poor women’s abortions, saying, ‘‘There are many things in life that are not fair.’’
1990 — Russian president Boris Yeltsin shocks the 28th congress of the Soviet Communist Party by announcing he is resigning his party membership.
1991 — The US Congress grants President George Bush authority to use force to drive Iraq from Kuwait.
1993 — The leader of Bosnia’s Serbs accepts peace proposals for the warshattered country, hailed as a breakthrough towards a settlement after nine months of brutal fighting; a 7.8magnitude earthquake strikes northern Japan, killing 196 people.
2000 — Britain lifts its ban on homosexuals serving in the military, accepting a landmark European court ruling.
2005 — Deep Impact, a Nasa space probe designed to study the interior composition of the comet Tempel 1, is launched from Cape Canaveral.
2006 — During a stoning ritual at the Haj pilgrimage in Mena, Saudi Arabia, 362 Muslim pilgrims are crushed to death .
2009 — Construction workers in northern Poland unearth a World War 2era mass grave containing what are believed to be the bodies of 1800 German men, women and children who disappeared during the Soviet Army’s march to Berlin.
2010 — An earthquake devastates Haiti, killing 230,000 people, injuring 300,000 and leaving more than 1 million homeless.
2012 — Wellington’s Ben Hana (Blanket Man), who became a feature of innercity Wellington street life, is taken to hospital, where he dies three days later.
Today’s birthdays:
Joseph Brittan, New Zealand newspaper editor/provincial councillor (180667); John Graham, New Zealand politician (18431926); Thomas Ryan, All Black and New Zealand artist (18641927); Hugh Lusk, New Zealand cricketer (18661944); John Sydney Swan, New Zealand architect (18741936); Dorothy Wall, New Zealandborn author/illustrator (18941942); Ron Stewart , All Black (190482); Everard Jackson, All Black (191475); Sir Roy Emile Jack, New Zealand politician (191477);
Una Wickham, New Zealand cricketer (192283); Emily Schuster, New Zealand weaver (192797); Maurice (Moss) Marshall, New Zealand middledistance runner (19272013); Stu Freebairn, All Black (1932); George Joseph Kresge (The Amazing Kreskin), US mentalist (1935); Graham Billing, New Zealand novelist/ journalist/poet (19362001); Dick Motz,
New Zealand cricketer (19402007); Kirstie Alley, US actress (1951); John Walker, New Zealand middledistance runner (1952); Jeff Bezos, US businessman (1964); Brett Leaver, New Zealand field hockey player (1970); Robert Hickey, New Zealand basketballer (1974); Tony Lochhead, New Zealand footballer (1982).
Quote of the day:
‘‘I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the Pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock.’’ — Howard Stern, US radio/television personality and author, who was born on this day in 1954.