HOT TOPICS

Quiz

1 What is the largest lake in the

South Island of New Zealand?

2 What brand of bourbon sponsors the Homegrown music festival?

3 How many points for a goal in

Australian rules football?

4 What make of car are New

Zealand's new police vehicles?

5 Who published the Book of

Mormon in 1830?

History

1649 The Maryland Toleration

Act, providing for freedom of worship for all Christians, is passed by the Maryland assembly.

1789 John Adams is sworn in as the first vice-president of the US.

1816 Charlotte Bronte, author of Jane Eyre, is born in Thornton, England.

1836 An army of Texans led by Sam Houston defeats the

Mexicans at San Jacinto, assuring Texas independence.

1910 Author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, dies in Redding, Connecticut, at age 74.

1918 Manfred von Richthofen, 25, the German ace known as the ‘Red Baron’, believed to have downed 80 enemy aircraft during World War I, is himself shot down and killed while in action over France.

1975 With Communist forces closing in, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu resigns after nearly 10 years in office and flees the country.

1976 Clinical trials of the swine flu vaccine begin in Washington DC. 1977 The musical play Annie, based on the Little Orphan Annie comic strip, opens on Broadway, beginning a run of 2377 performances.

1980 Rosie Ruiz is the first woman to cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon; however, she is later exposed as a fraud.

(Canadian Jacqueline Gareau is named the actual winner of the women’s race.)

In 2015 An Egyptian criminal court sentences ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi to 20 years in prison over the killing of protesters in 2012.

2016 Prince, one of the most inventive and influential musicians of modern times, is found dead at his home in suburban Minneapolis; he was 57.