TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY is Saturday, May 11, the 132nd day of 2024. There are 234 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1812 — British prime minister Spencer Perceval is assassinated by a bankrupt broker, John Bellingham, as he enters the House of Commons.
1833 — The brig Lady of the Lake sinks off the coast of Newfoundland, with the loss of up to 265 lives; 15 survived.
1844 — Governor Robert FitzRoy attends a weeklong hakari ¯ (feast) at Remuera with thousands of Maori ¯ and European guests; Frederick Weld arrives with the first sheep in the Wairarapa region and along with partner Charles Clifford undertakes the first largescale sheep farming in New Zealand.
1877 — A tsunami is experienced along the length of New Zealand’s east coast.
1900 — James ‘‘The Boilermaker’’ Jeffries defeats James ‘‘Gentleman Jim’’ Corbett by knockout to retain the heavyweight boxing title in the 23rd round of a scheduled 25round contest. He won the title after defeating Englandborn New Zealander Bob Fitzsimmons almost a year earlier.
1917 — King George V grants Royal Letters Patent to New Zealand establishing the office of GovernorGeneral.
1932 — Following on from a riot in central Wellington the day before, a meeting of 2000 relief workers in the city is broken up by police.
1943 — Two US amphibious forces land on Attu in the Aleutians, the first US territory to be recaptured from the Japanese in World War 2.
1949 — Israel is admitted to the United Nations.
1977 — Evidence is released by the New Zealand Medical Council against controversial cancer therapist Milan Brych revealing he is an exconvict with fraudulent qualifications. In the meantime, Brych has set up a new clinic in Rarotonga.
1960 — Israeli soldiers capture German war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires.
1969 — British comedy troupe Monty Python forms.
1981 — Police in Dunedin report a juvenile crime wave in the city during the school holidays.
1985 — Fiftysix people die and more than 200 are injured when fire engulfs the main stand at Bradford City football ground in Northern England.
1996 — A ValuJet DC9 catches fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashes into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board.
1997 — The Deep Blue IBM computer defeats world chess champion Garry Kasparov in the final game in New York, winning the sixgame chess match between man and machine 31⁄ 221⁄ 2.
1998 — The first euro coin is minted in France. 2000 — With the birth of a baby girl named Astha (‘‘Faith’’ in Hindi), India’s population officially hits one billion.
2002 — Diane Pretty (43), a woman stricken with motor neurone disease who unsuccessfully petitioned British and European courts for the right to have her husband assist in her suicide, dies from the complications she sought to avoid.
2013 — Dunedin’s Forsyth Barr Stadium is crowned supreme winner at the annual New Zealand Commercial Project Awards held in Auckland.