HOT TOPICS

Quiz

1 What director links the films

Trainspotting, The Beach, and

Slumdog Millionaire?

2 Wiener schnitzel is named after

the capital city of what country?

3 The football club Villarreal was founded and remains based in what country?

4 Douglas Haig commanded the British Expeditionary Force in Europe during what war?

5 What was the title of the Spice Girls' debut album, released in 1996?

History

1377 King Edward III dies after ruling England for 50 years; his grandson Richard II succeeds him.

1788 The US Constitution goes into effect as New Hampshire becomes the ninth state to ratify it.

1834 Cyrus Hall Mccormick receives a patent for his reaping machine.

1864 In the battle of Te Ranga, near Tauranga, British forces are able to attack before the pa¯ is finished to exact revenge for the humiliating defeat battle at Gate Pa¯, 5km away. More than 100 Ma¯ori, including the hero of Gate Pa¯, Ra¯wiri Puhirake, and 13 British troops are killed.

1887 Britain celebrates golden jubilee of Queen Victoria.

1954 The American Cancer Society presents to the Medical Association meeting a study that finds that men who smoke cigarettes die at a considerably higher rate than non-smokers.

1964 In NZ, 7000 hysterical fans greet the Beatles when they touch down in Wellington.

1964 Three civil rights workers are slain in Philadelphia, Mississippi; their bodies are found buried in an earth dam six weeks later. (In 2005, former Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen (80) is found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 60 years in prison, where he dies in 2018.)

1977 Menachem Begin of the Likud bloc becomes Israel’s sixth prime minister.

1989 A sharply divided Supreme Court rules burning the US flag as a form of protest is protected by the First Amendment.

2021 Kiwi weightlifter Laurel Hubbard is the first openly transgender athlete to be selected for the Olympic Games.