The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Christchurch Town Hall, 1978.

The backing band came ons tage to tune up, started jamming, the audience picked up the rhythm and began clapping in time.

By the time Roberta Flack came ons tage we were well and truely warmed up and she took us even higher, singing just like this:

Happy birthday Roberta, 73 today.

Wanna be a blog idol?

Stuff is calling for entries for its second Blog Idol competition.

All you’ve got to do is:

Write your best blog post, on any subject, up to 150 words, and send it together with your name, address and contact details to blogidol@stuff.co.nz.

Impress our Stuff panel, and you’ll be a finalist, blogging with a “voting” audience of thousands of Stuff readers. The winner of Blog Idol 2 will win a fantastic new Nokia N95 cellphone, courtesy of Vodafone, plus a contract to blog on Stuff.

The end of free milk in schools

On this day in 1967 the provision of free milk in schools ended.

It had been introduced in 1937 as part of the Labour government’s plan to boost the health of children.

By the time it finished it was costing the government about 840,000 pounds a year.

At Oamaru South School the milk was delivered to the gate where it sat in all weathers until the milk monitors – some of the bigger standard four boys – brought it in and delivered it to each classroom.

In winter it was freezing, in summer it was warm.

This was long before the days of homogenised or skim milk and each half pint bottle was topped with a large glob of cream.

In all seasons it was awful and the end of the daily torture by milk was celebrated by my generation of school children.

8 sheep and a cow each

The sheep population has dropped and the  dairy cow population has climbed according to Statistics NZ’s latest animal production survey.

Total dairy cattle numbers hit a record high of 5.8 million in 2009, 4 percent higher than in 2008. Since 1979, numbers in the overall dairy herd have doubled according to the annual survey, which collects information on livestock and arable farming, horticulture, forestry, and selected farming practices, including fertiliser and cultivation.

At 4.6 million, the 2009 milking herd, identified as cows and heifers in milk or in calf, was 250,000 larger than in 2008. This expansion was due to both dairy conversions and growth in the number of milking cows in existing herds. “Increased numbers in the milking herd have resulted in there being one milking cow for every New Zealander”, said agriculture statistics manager Gary Dunnet.

The increase in dairy cows was one of the reasons the sheep population dropped –  down 5 percent on 2008 to 32.4 million in 2009. that’s below the peak of 70 million reached in 1982.

The beef cattle population at 4.1 million was similar to the previous year and the 1.2 million deer was 6% fewer.

If you divide the human population by that of farm animals we’d all have just under 8 sheep, a dairy cow, a beef cattle beast and 1/4 of a deer each.

It’s only a couple of decades ago that a design-a-tee-shirt- contest was won by one with the slogan: NZ, we’re “ewenique”, 60 million sheep can’t be wrong.

But New Zealand’s not the only country with a declining number of sheep. In Australia drought and conversion to cropping have led to a big drop in the ovine population. It was about 120 million in 1997, now it’s around 70 million.

Water will take us past Australia

The government’s plans for water storeage, which were outlined by John Key in his Statement to Parliament have gained the approval of Federated Farmers.

“New Zealand can pass Australia because we have the water and they don’t,” says Don Nicolson, President of Federated Farmers.

“While there’s no numbers in the Prime Minister’s speech, Federated Farmers’ intense lobbying on water storage has water firmly on the National Infrastructure Unit’s work programme.

“Water is to our economy what minerals are to Australia’s. Harnessing water to grow grass and crops that would otherwise run out to sea is economically transformational. . .”

It doesn’t have to be irrigation for increased agricultural production or minerals. 

If a little of what’s under conservation land with little environmental value can be mined, it could be both.

February 10 in history

On February 10:

1306  Robert the Bruce murdered John Comyn, his leading political rival sparking revolution in the Scottish Wars of Independence

1355 The St. Scholastica’s Day riot broke out in Oxford leaving 63 scholars and perhaps 30 locals dead in two days.

1567 An explosion destroyed the Kirk o’ Field house in Edinburgh. The second husband of Mary Queen of Scots, Lord Darnley was found strangled, in what many believe to be an assassination.

 1567 drawing of Kirk o’ Field after the murder of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley drawn for Cecil (William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley) shortly after the murder.

1763 The 1763 Treaty of Paris ended theFrench and Indian War and France ceded Quebec to Great Britain.

1775 Charles Lamb, English essayist, was born.

1798 Louis Alexandre Berthier invaded Rome.

1814 Battle of Champaubert

1840 Queen Victoria  married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

 Marriage of Victoria and Albert by Sir George Hayter

1846 First Anglo-Sikh War: Battle of Sobraon – British defeated Sikhs in final battle of the war.

 Raja Lal Singh, who led Sikh forces against the British during the First Anglo-Sikh War, 1846

1870 The YWCA was founded.

1893 Jimmy Durante, American actor/comedian (, was born.

1894  Harold Macmillan, British Prime Minister, was born.

1906 HMS Dreadnought (1906) was launched.

1920 Jozef Haller de Hallenburg performed a symbolic wedding of Poland to the sea, celebrating restitution of Polish access to open sea.

 

1923 Texas Tech University was founded as Texas Technological College in Lubbock.

1930  Robert Wagner, American actor, was born.

 

1931 New Delhi became the capital of India.

1933 The New York City-based Postal Telegraph Company introduces the first singing telegram.

1934 Fleur Adcock, New Zealand poet, was born.

1937 Roberta Flack, American singer, was born.

1947 Italy ceded most of Venezia Giulia to Yugoslavia.

1950 Mark Spitz, American swimmer, was born.

1952 Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore. was born.

1955  – Greg Norman, Australian golfer, was born.

1962 Captured American spy pilot Gary Powers was exchanged for captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

  

1964 – The aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne (R21) collided with the destroyer HMAS Voyager (D04) off the south coast of New South Wales.

 Animation showing the courses and positions of the two ships leading up to the collision

1967 The provision of free milk in schools ended.

 The 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified.

1981A fire at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel-casino killed eight and injured 198.

1982  Iafeta Paleaaesina, New Zealand rugby league player, was born.

1989 Ron Brown became the first African American to lead a major American political party when he was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

1996 The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov for the first time.

 

2008 The 2008 Namdaemun fire severely damaged Namdaemun, the first National Treasure of South Korea.

 

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia