TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Monday, January 25, the 25th day of 2021. There are 340 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1327 — King Edward II of England is forced to abdicate by powerful barons in favour of his son, Edward III.
1533 — King Henry VIII of England, defying Rome, marries his second wife, Anne Boleyn.
1841 — New Zealand’s first horse race is held at Te Aro.
1858 — Felix Mendelssohn’s Wedding March is played at the marriage of Queen Victoria’s daughter Victoria to Friedrich of Prussia, and becomes a popular wedding processional.
1890 — US journalist Nellie Bly arrived back in New Jersey to complete her roundtheworld journey in 72 days.
1891 — John Ballance becomes New Zealand premier. He held office for just over two years but his Liberal Party remained in power for the next 21 years.
1893 — Dunedin’s Selwyn College is dedicated by Bishop Nevill.
1895 — New Zealander Alexander von Tunzelmann claims to be the first to set foot on the Antarctic continent.
1915 — The inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, inaugurates a United States transcontinental telephone service.
1924 — The first Winter Olympics open at Chamonix, France.
1945 — The Battle of the Bulge, the last major German offensive of World War 2, ends in an Allied victory.
1954 — Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of
Edinburgh visit Dunedin.
1964 — Blue Ribbon Sports, which would later become Nike, is founded by University of Oregon track and field athletes.
1971 — In Uganda, army officers depose Milton Obote and Idi Amin becomes president.
1974 — Dick Tayler records a historic victory in the 10,000m on the first day of the Commonwealth Games in Christchurch.
1980 — Mother Teresa is honoured with India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna.
1985 — Diver and explorer Kelly Tarlton opens his Underwater World in Auckland. Tarlton will die suddenly, aged 47, just seven weeks later.
1986 — Voyager 2, sweeping to within 81,000km of Uranus, discovers a 10th ring, a 15th moon and a north pole that angles downwards; the National Resistance Movement topples the government of Tito Okello in Uganda.
1990 — Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto gives birth to a baby girl, the first head of government to give birth while in office.
1992 — Russian president Boris Yeltsin says Russia will stop targeting US cities with nuclear missiles.
1994 — Without admitting guilt, Michael Jackson settles a lawsuit that said he molested a young boy.
1995 — The world comes close to nuclear war when Russia mistakes a Norwegian research rocket for a US Trident missile and almost launches a nuclear attack.
1998 — United States tourists Thomas and Eileen Lonergan are left behind by a scubadiving operator on a reef off Port Douglas, North Queensland. They were never found.
1999 — An earthquake devastates a coffeegrowing region in Colombia, killing at least 940 and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless.
2002 — India successfully testfires an intermediaterange ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
2005 — A stampede and fire kill 258 Hindu pilgrims during a pilgrimage to the Mandher Devi temple in western India.
2006 — Astronomers detect OGLE2005-BLG-390Lb, the most Earthlike planet yet found around a star other than our sun; hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crowd polling stations in the first parliamentary elections in a decade. Hamas emerges as the winner.
2011 — The first wave of the Egyptian revolution begins with street demonstrations, rallies, acts of civil disobedience, labour strikes and violent clashes in Cairo, Alexandria and most other major cities.
2013 — Fifty people are killed and more than 120 injured during a prison riot in Barquisimeto, Venezuela.
2018 — Raising more than $7700 for Ronald McDonald House in Christchurch, 11yearold Harry Willis becomes the first person to pogostick his way up Dunedin’s Baldwin St, then believed to be the steepest street in the world; the Doomsday Clock is moved forward by 30sec to 2min to midnight by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the closest since 1950s.