TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Saturday, February 20, the 51st day of 2021. There are 314 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1863 — Julius Haast arrives on the South Island’s West Coast, using a route through the Southern Alps now known as Haast Pass.
1914 — William James Scotland, flying his Caudron biplane between Invercargill and Gore, makes the first crosscountry flight in New Zealand.
1933 — The United States House of Representatives completes congressional action on an amendment to repeal prohibition, the constitutional ban on the manufacture, importation, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages.
1950 — Land sale controls are lifted in New Zealand.
1954 — Yvette Williams breaks the world longjump record at Gisborne, recording a distance of 6.29m, surpassing the mark set 10 years earlier by Fanny BlankersKoen.
1958 — Opotiki in the Bay of Plenty is engulfed by flooding. It is the worstaffected area following several days of torrential rain that leaves the upper North Island sodden.
1985 — Defending his WBC flyweight championship at Alexandra Pavilion, London, Sot Chitalada’s $104,000 winner’s cheque is stolen by a ringside pickpocket.
1998 — The last power cable supplying downtown Auckland fails, leaving innercity blocks without power for weeks; 15yearold American Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest gold medallist in Winter Olympics history when she wins the women’s figure skating title at Nagano, Japan.
2000 — The Otago Central Rail Trail opens for recreational biking, running and walking of the 150km track from Middlemarch to Clyde.
2001 — New Zealand Postrun Kiwibank gets approval from the Government, which confirms a contribution of $80 million to help set it up.
2002 — A fire breaks out on a crowded train travelling from Cairo to Luxor in southern Egypt, killing 373 people and injuring 60 in the worst train disaster in Egyptian history.
2003 — A fire sparked by heavy metal band Great White’s pyrotechnic display kills 100 people, including the group’s guitarist Ty Longley, and injures a further 230 at a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island.
2007 — Three ultraendurance athletes complete the first run across the world’s largest desert. US runner Charlie Engle (44), Canadian Ray Zahab (38), and Kevin Lin (30), of Taiwan, crossed the Sahara Desert’s gruelling 6400km in less than four months.
2016 — In his final cricket match for New Zealand, captain Brendon McCullum blasts a century off a worldrecord 54 balls on the first day of the second test against Australia at the Hagley Oval in Christchurch. McCullum was eventually out for 145, and finished his career having hit 107 sixes in a 101test career, another world record.