Today in history
Today is Thursday, October 10, the 283rd day of 2019. There are 82 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1867 — The Maori Representation Act creates four Maori seats in Parliament. Maori men are granted universal voting rights 12 years before their European counterparts.
1883 — The New Zealand Herald becomes the first newspaper in New Zealand to be printed on a rotary press.
1886 — The tuxedo dinner jacket makes its American debut at the autumn ball in Tuxedo Park, New York.
1899 — One of the United States’ leading black inventors, Isaac R. Johnson, receives a patent for the bicycle frame.
1900 — New Zealand celebrates its first Labour Day public holiday. The official Labour Day public holiday in New Zealand used to be celebrated on the second Wednesday of October until it was moved to the fourth Monday of October in 1910, where it has remained ever since. Although it was not a public holiday, New Zealand celebrated its first Labour Day with events mostly in the main centres, including a procession through the Octagon on October 28, 1890. The day celebrates the struggle for an eighthour working day.
1911 — Chinese nationalist leader Sun Yatsen proclaims a republic at Wuchang, beginning the revolution which ends the Manchu dynasty.
1913 — The Atlantic and Pacific oceans are connected when the Gamboa Dam in the Panama Canal is blown up.
1918 — In World War 1, the RMS Leinster, an Irish mail ship, is sunk by a German submarine when on its way to Holyhead, killing at least 480 people.
1935 — Porgy and Bess, an opera by composer
George Gershwin, has its New York premiere.
1947 — Unpasteurised milk causes the last major
typhoid episode, at Kaikoura. Three people die. 1957 — A fire at the Windscale nuclear plant in Cumbria, Great Britain, becomes Britain’s worst nuclear accident. It is ranked in severity at level 5 out of a possible 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
1961 — The whole population of the South Atlantic island Tristan da Cunha is evacuated to Britain after a volcano erupts.
1964 — The Tokyo Olympic Games, the first held
in Asia, begin.
1970 — Fiji, a British colony since 1874, becomes
an independent member of the Commonwealth. 1973 — US vicepresident Spiro Agnew resigns
after his conviction for income tax evasion.
1975 — The Treaty of Waitangi Act passes into law, setting up the Waitangi Tribunal to hear and report on Maori grievances regarding the Treaty.
1992 — New Zealand boxing heavyweight David Tua’s reputation will never be the same after he appears on the popular television game show Wheel of Fortune. He disputes that he requested an ‘‘O for awesome’’, but his knowledge is further open to question later in the game, when he asks for a ‘‘p’’ when buying a vowel.
1993 — Socialist Andreas Papandreou returns to power in Greek elections; the MV Seohae, a ferry overloaded with 362 people, capsizes off Puan County, South Korea. Only 70 people survive.
2002 — Chen Ziming, Chinese dissident and organiser of the 1989 prodemocracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, ends 13 years in jail. He was sentenced in 1991.
2004 — Near Piha Beach, a distressed
Iraena Asher (19) makes a 111 call to police,