TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY is Wednesday, April 14, the 104th day of 2021. There are 261 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:

1629 — The Peace of Susa ends the war between England and France.

1775 — The first American society for the abolition of slavery is organised by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.

1828 — A first edition of Noah Webster’s

American Dictionary of the English Language is published.

1834 — The republican uprising in France is crushed by the army under Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers.

1849 — Hungarians proclaim independence from the Hapsburg empire, with Lajos Kossuth as governorpresident. The rebellion is put down by Russian troops in August.

1874 — The railway line between Wellington and Lower Hutt is opened.

1890 — Delegates to the Washington Conference of American States create what is to become the PanAmerican Union, in which North, South and Central America are all American nations.

1892 — At a hui of 96 chiefs at Te Tiriti o Waitangi marae, a Maori parliament is established. Its main aim is to unify tribes and ensure the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi are adhered to.

1912 — The British liner Titanic collides with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and begins sinking. More than 1500 crew and passengers died.

1932 — Unemployed workers riot in central Auckland after the leader of the Unemployed Workers’ Movement, Jim Edwards, was batoned by police at a public meeting in Queen St. About 200 people were injured in conflicts that followed and Queen St shops were looted.

1937 — A national industrial conference begins, during which a new Federation of Labour is formed, with Angus McLagan as president; Dunedin’s chief post office is officially opened.

1939 — John Steinbeck’s novel The

Grapes of Wrath is published.

1945 — US bombers pound Tokyo and Japan’s Imperial Palace in World War 2.

1956 — Ampex Corp demonstrates its first commercial videotape recorder, the AMPEX quadruplex VR1000A.

1964 — Milton’s Bruce Herald newspaper marks its centenary.

1970 — The Government announces the replacement of imperial measurement with metric by the end of 1976.

1973 — Ireland defeats France 64 at Lansdowne Road, Dublin, to create a fiveway tie for the Five Nations Rugby Championship.

1981 — Columbia, America’s first operational space shuttle, lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California after completing its first test flight.

1986 — Desmond Tutu is elected the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town.

1990 — About 1500 drunken University of Otago students cause havoc in North Dunedin when a party in Castle St gets out of hand. They overturn cars, light street fires and pelt police with bottles and bricks. The disturbances continue well into the next day.

1993 — On International Women’s Day, a Chinese newspaper asks 100 women what they would like to be. Sixty said they wanted to be men.

1997 — Hundreds of Iranian students clash with government troops outside the German embassy in the first violence since a Berlin court blamed Iran for a 1992 assassination.

2010 — A 6.9magnitude earthquake strikes a mountainous Tibetan region of China, killing at least 2698 people and injuring 12,135, with 270 missing.

2013 — Justin Trudeau, son of longserving Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, is elected leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. He became prime minister in 2015.

2017 — Cyclone Cook makes landfall on the east coast of the upper North Island, before tracking down the country. Despite warnings of its possible severity, little damage occurs.

Today’s birthdays:

Sir George Grey, New Zealand governor and prime minister (181298); James Cowan, New Zealand author (18701943); Leonard Henry Trent, New Zealand recipient of the Victoria Cross in World War 2 (191586); Alan MacDiarmid, New Zealandborn recipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (19272007); Loretta Lynn, US country singer (1932); Robin Tait, New Zealand Olympic and Commonwealth Games athlete (19401984); Julie Christie, British actress (1940); Brad Garrett, US actor (1960); Anthony Michael Hall, US actor (1968); Adrien Brody, US actor (1973); Sarah Michelle Gellar, US actress (1977).

Quote of the day:

‘‘I tend to think you’re fearless when you recognise why you should be scared of things, but do them anyway.’’ — Christian Bale, English actor (1974).