TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Saturday, February 6, the 37th day of 2021. There are 328 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1840 — The Maori translation of the Treaty of Waitangi is signed by Lieutenant Governor William Hobson and 43 chiefs at Waitangi. Over the next eight months, further signatures will be gathered from tribes around the country.
1871 — The Girls’ Provincial School of Otago (later Otago Girls’ High School) opens. It is the first public girls’ secondary school in the southern hemisphere, and the outcome of seven years of campaigning following the opening of the local public boys’ high school in 1863. Otago Girls’ High School opened with 78 pupils and by the end of the year, the number had increased to 130.
1881 — Covering a distance of 2.3km, Dunedin’s first cabledrawn tramway opens on the Roslyn line up Rattray St. It closed in 1951.
1906 — Bondi Surf Bathers Life Saving Club, believed to be the world’s first lifesaving club, is founded in Sydney.
1935 — The Monopoly board game goes on sale for first time; women vote in Turkey for the first time.
1940 — Despite being boycotted by Waikato Maori, 10,000 people gather at Waitangi to celebrate the centennial of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi.
1942 — Five people are killed in a bomb explosion at Trentham.
1944 — Prominent Dunedin solicitor Alfred Hanlon KC dies aged 78.
1952 — Elizabeth II becomes Queen of the United Kingdom and her other Realms and Territories and Head of the Commonwealth upon the death of her father, George VI. At the exact moment of succession, she was in a tree house at the Treetops Hotel in Kenya.
1958 — A plane carrying the Manchester United soccer team back from a European Cup match crashes on the runway at Munich Airport. Eight members of the side were among the 23 killed.
1961 — The first national Waitangi Day celebration takes place. It will not be a public holiday until 1974, when it is called New Zealand Day.
1983 — The trial of former Gestapo commandant Klaus Barbie for war crimes during World War 2, begins in France.
1987 — The first five members of the Order of New Zealand receive their honours. It is New Zealand’s highest honour and is restricted to just 20 living members.
1989 — The Round Table Talks start in Poland, thus marking the beginning of the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe.
1990 — At celebrations marking 150 years since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, Queen Elizabeth II is struck by a protester’s wet Tshirt.
1997 — Surging Canterbury floodwaters cause the collapse of the Opuha Dam near Fairlie, releasing a violent wall of water into the Opuha system and the already high Opihi River. A state of emergency is declared in the area and 200 residents from the settlements of Stratheona and Butlers Crossing, near Pleasant Point, are evacuated.
2011 — Temperatures soar throughout Otago, and a nearrecord 34.4degC for Dunedin city is noted at Musselburgh.