TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY is Friday, January 15, the 15th day of 2021. There are 350 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

69 — Roman Emperor Servius Sulpicius Galba, who succeeded Nero in AD68, is assassinated by the Praetorian Guard in the Roman Forum.

1535 — King Henry VIII assumes the title of Supreme Head of the Church of England.

1559 — England’s Queen Elizabeth I is crowned at Westminster Abbey.

1582 — The Peace of JamZapolski between Russia and Poland is signed, with Pope Gregory XIII mediating, by which Russia loses access to the Baltic.

1759 — The British Museum in London opens to the public.

1778 — Captain James Cook arrives at the Hawaiian Islands, which he named the Sandwich Islands and where he was killed on a later trip there.

1797 — James Hetherington, a London haberdasher, is fined for wearing his newest creation, the top hat.

1834 — Fiftyfive convicts are tried after a mutiny on Norfolk Island; 29 are condemned to death, of whom 13 are executed.

1862 — The Bank of New Zealand opens in Wellington.

1867 — Forty people die when the ice cover on the boating lake at Regent’s Park, London, collapses. The lake is subsequently drained and its depth reduced to 4ft before being reopened to the public.

1875 — A fire at the Victoria Brewery in north Dunedin causes extensive damage. Deficiencies were exposed in the ability of the fire brigade to fight such a blaze.

1889 — The CocaCola Company, then known as the Pemberton Medicine Company, is incorporated in Atlanta.

1892 — A Springfield, Massachusetts, magazine called Triangle publishes the rules for a new game: basketball.

1900 — Bubonic plague is reported in Adelaide after spreading down from China; on January 19, the first case is reported in Sydney; 103 die.

1908 — Robert BadenPowell’s fortnightly magazine Scouting for Boys begins publication.

1910 — The name of the French Congo is changed to French Equatorial Africa, but it now also includes Chad and OubanguiChari (known today as the Central African Republic); construction concludes on the Buffalo Dam in Wyoming in the US, which at a height of 99m is the highest dam in the world at the time. Seven construction workers were killed on the project during its construction, which cost $US1.4 million. 1911 — The Palestinian Arabiclanguage Falastin newspaper is founded.

1919 — Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two of the most prominent socialists in Germany, are tortured and murdered by the Freikorps at the end of the Spartacist uprising; a wave of molasses released from an exploding storage tank sweeps through Boston, Massachusetts, killing 21 and injuring 150.

1922 — The Irish Free State is established under Michael Collins.

1936 — The Union Airways De Havilland DH86 Express aircraft Karoro begins Dunedin’s first air service, transporting passengers from the Taieri Aerodrome to Christchurch, Blenheim and Palmerston North and return; the first allglass office building opens in Ohio, built, appropriately, for the OwensIllinois Glass Company.

1943 — The Pentagon opens outside Washington DC. Home of the US Defence Department, is completed. It is the world’s largest office building, covering 13.8ha, and has 27km of corridors.

1963 — Katangese leader Moise Tshombe surrenders to United Nations peacekeepers, ending the secession of Katanga from the Congo.

1967 — The first Super Bowl is played as the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeat the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League 3510.

1969 — The Soviet Union launches

Soyuz 5.

1970 — US Vicepresident Spiro Agnew arrives in New Zealand, to a hail of antiVietnam War protests.

1971 — Egypt’s Aswan Dam is opened by President Anwar Sadat.

1973 — Citing progress in peace negotiations, US president Richard Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam.

1975 — The Alvor Agreement is signed, ending the Angolan War of Independence and handing Angola independence from Portugal.

1991 — The United Nations deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from occupied Kuwait expires, preparing the way for the start of Operation Desert Storm.

1996 — Greek premier Andreas Papandreou resigns after nearly two months in hospital for treatment of pneumonia.

1998 — President Suharto of Indonesia reaches an agreement with the International Monetary Fund on an austerity programme to halt the country’s economic meltdown.

2001 — Wikipedia, a free wiki online content encyclopedia, is launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.

2005 — The European Space Agency’s SMART1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron and other surface elements on the moon.

2009 — US Airways’ Capt Chesley ‘‘Sully’’ Sullenberger ditches his Airbus A320214 airliner in the Hudson River after a flock of birds disables both of the plane’s engines. All 155 people aboard survive.

Today’s birthdays:

Duncan Macfarlane, New Zealand merchant/government agent (18271903); Mary McKillop, Australian nun (18421909); Robert J.T. Bell, New Zealand mathematician/academic (18761973); Sydney Smith, New Zealand cricketer (18811963); Albert Henry Baskerville, New Zealand rugby

league administrator (18831908); Frank Hutchens, New Zealand concert pianist/ music teacher/composer (18921965); Hedda Dyson, New Zealand journalist/ magazine editor (18971951); Ron Guthrey, decorated New Zealand soldier in World War 2 and local body politician (19162008); George Lowe, New Zealand mountaineer/explorer (19242013); Edmund Cotter, New Zealand mountaineer (19272017); Margaret O’Brien, US actress (1937); Sir David Gascoigne, New Zealand lawyer/ statesman (1940); Harry Mahon, New Zealand rowing coach (19422001);

Charo (Maria Baeza), SpanishAmerican actress (1951), James Nesbitt, Irish actor (1965); Chad Lowe, US actor/ director (1968); Simon Crafar, New Zealand Grand Prix and WSBK motorcycle road racer (1969); Shane McMahon, US professional wrestler/businessman (1970); Greg Loveridge, New Zealand cricketer (1975); Eddie Cahill, US actor (1978); Matt Gibb, New Zealand television presenter (1981); Shannon Willoughby, Black Fern (1982); Victor Rasuk, US actor (1984); Isaia Toeava, All Black (1986); Aaron Clapham, New Zealand footballer (1987); Rhys Thornbury, New Zealand skeleton racer (1990); Olivia Loe, New Zealand rower (1992).

Quote of the day:

‘‘The most reliable way to forecast the future is to try to understand the present.’’ — John Naisbitt, US author, who was born on this day in 1929.

ODT and agencies