TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Monday, May 29, the 149th day of 2023. There are 216 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1453 — Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, is captured by the Turks. Some historians list the date as the end of the Middle Ages.
1660 — On his 30th birthday, Charles II returns to London from exile in the Netherlands to claim the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth comes to an end.
1765 — Peter II, the grandson of Peter I and son of Alexis, becomes Tsar of Russia.
1868 — The foundation stone for Dunedin’s First Church is laid by the Rev Dr Burns, who arrived in the province with the first settlers in 1848.
1903 — The threemasted sailing ship Loch Long is wrecked off the Chatham Islands, with the loss of 24 lives.
1905 — New Zealand’s first St Helens Maternity Hospital is opened in Rintol St, Wellington, becoming the first staterun maternity hospital in the world. In all, seven St Helens Hospitals are set up throughout New Zealand but later merged with local hospital boards, the last of which was transferred to the National Women’s Hospital in Auckland in 1990.
1914 — The liner Empress of Ireland, carrying 1477 passengers and crew, collides with the Norwegian freighter Storstadt in the St Lawrence River, Canada. Of the 1477 people on board, 1012 died. The death toll is the largest of any Canadian maritime incident in peacetime.
1927 — Dunedin’s new automated telephone system comes into operation.
1942 — Bing Crosby records Irving Berlin’s White Christmas in Los Angeles for Decca Records. It remains the world’s bestselling single, with sales in excess of 50 million.
1947 — Mabel Howard is appointed minister of health and minister in charge of child welfare, becoming the first woman to serve as a Cabinet minister in New Zealand.
1953 — New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reach the summit of Mt Everest. Another New Zealand climber in the Britishled expedition, George Lowe, is also part of the team that became the first to climb the world’s highest mountain.
1972 — United States president Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign a declaration pledging an era of peaceful coexistence between the US and the Soviet Union.
1982 — One of Dunedin’s favourite sons, Glenn Turner, joins an elite group of international cricketers when he scores his 100th firstclass century playing county cricket for Worcestershire against Warwickshire. He played an astonishing innings of 311 not out and his side declared at 501/1. He is the first person to score his 100th 100 with a triple century.
1985 — More than 30 people are killed and 375 others injured at Brussels’ Heysel Stadium in riots involving Liverpool and Juventus supporters before the European Cup football final.
1990 — Boris Yeltsin is elected president of Russia, the largest of the Soviet Union’s 15 republics.
1991 — The Yugoslav republic of Croatia declares itself ‘‘an independent state’’ and formally secedes from Yugoslavia a month later.
1999 — The US space shuttle Discovery becomes the first spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station.
2013 — Dunedin’s weekly free newspaper for the past five years DScene publishes its final edition. It was owned by Fairfax Media.
Today’s birthdays:
Sir Edward (Denis) Blundell, 12th New Zealand GovernorGeneral (190784); John F. Kennedy, US president (191763); Roy Crewdson, British musician/actor (1941); Gary Brooker, British musician (1945); LaToya Jackson, US singer (1956); Annette Bening, US actress (1958); Rupert Everett, British actor (1959); Melissa Etheridge, US singer (1961); Mike Sanderson, New Zealand sailor (1971); Laverne Cox, US actress (1972); Neil Harlock, New Zealand footballer (1975); Melanie ‘‘Scary Spice’’ Brown, British singer (1975); Riley Keough, US actress (1989).
Quote of the day:
‘‘You've just got to trust your instincts and realise that you can't please all the people all the time. You've got to please yourself ultimately in the end.’’ — Noel Gallagher, British musician (1967).