Lerner & Loewe Medley

Alan Jay Lerner would have been 92 today.

Real world vs virtual world

The way communication in the virtual world can affect behaviour in real life was the starting point for my discussion about on-line matters with Jim Mora on Critical Mass today.

It was prompted by I Tweet Therefore I am  in which Peggy Orenstein asked:

 How much, I began to wonder, was I shaping my Twitter feed, and how much was Twitter shaping me?

She writes on “Alone Together,”  a soon-to-be-published book by Sherry Turkle, a professor at M.I.T., who interviewed more than 400 children and parents about their use of social media and cellphones.

 Among young people especially she found that the self was increasingly becoming externally manufactured rather than internally developed: a series of profiles to be sculptured and refined in response to public opinion. “On Twitter or Facebook you’re trying to express something real about who you are,” she explained. “But because you’re also creating something for others’ consumption, you find yourself imagining and playing to your audience more and more. So those moments in which you’re supposed to be showing your true self become a performance. Your psychology becomes a performance.”

Writers have always been observers, tucking away incidents and anecdotes in mental notebooks knowing they might be the seed from which future writing grows.

When I was writing regularly for the ODT I did this all the time, letting ideas simmer away at the back of my mind before I retrieved them and turned them into a column. In doing so the I in the column was almost always a wittier, more clever woman than the me in the here and now because I had the time to polish the words through which she was shown.

Now electronic media has turned more people into writers, bloggers, tweeters, facebookers  . . . These media enable them not just to chronicle what’s happening to them but to do so almost instantly. There is a danger that in doing that people could let the real world becomes less important than the virtual one for which it provides inspiration and let the virtual one shape the real one.

Like many other phenomena, social networking can be a force for good if you use it wisely and well or a force for ill if you don’t.

To demonstrate that social media can be fun and even helpful, we also discussed the Dry July Star Chart Deborah created which concluded with a post on the efficacy of start charts at In A Strange land.

Word of the day

Evanescence – gradual fading, vanishing from sight.

Tuesday’s answers

Monday’s questions were:

1. What breed of cattle is this?

2. Who said: “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”?

3. Whose third Law of Motion states: “That for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”?

4. In Spanish it’s estrealla ; in French it’s étoile, in Italian it’s in Maori it’s whetu – what is it in English?

5. Which poet won the poetry section of this year’s NZ Post Book Awards (announced on Friday) for the book Just This?

Eleven people answered:

KG got one right.

Mr Gronk got two (and my general knowledge isn’t as good as the quiz suggests. As any teacher or reporter will tell you, you can get away with not knowing an answer if you knew where to look for it – and Google helps.

G got three.

Chris Bird and Gravedodger earned electronic bouquets for getting five right.

David got three (allowing that Brahman is a breed of Zebu) and a bonus for extra information.

Andrei got three.

Zen Tiger gets a bonus electronic posy for wit and doggerel.

Richard gets a point for honesty -though I’d be very surprised if you saw a Brahman in North Otago, but my farmer said you might have seen a Santa Gertrudis which began as a Shorthorn-Brahman cross.

PDM got three.

Adam got two and a bonus for humour.

Tuesday’s answers follow the break:

SCF requests receivership

South Canterbury Finance has requested the company be put into receivership:

SCF announced this morning that it has been unable to complete a recapitalisation and restructure.

As a result, the Company would have been unable to certify to its trustee, Trustees Executors, in accordance with the terms of its debenture trust deed that it was compliant with various financial covenants under the debenture trust deed for the financial year ended 30 June 2010.

The trustee acts on behalf of more than 35,000 debenture holders with $1.2 billion of debentures invested in the big lender.

Accordingly, South Canterbury Finance Limited has requested Trustees Executors to appoint a
receiver in respect of the whole of its undertaking and assets, and Trustees Executors Limited has done
so.

This is a sad end for what has been a flagship company which has been a sizeable lender in South Canterbury and beyond.

But there is no need to panic. Investors’ money is covered by the deposit guarantee scheme and the receivers will undertake an orderly sale of assets.

Much of the company’s money is tied up in mortgages on farmland. Forced sales of these would not only put SCF’s equity at risk it would have a very negative impact on farm values.

UPDATE:

Finance English Bill English said the government moved swiftly to repay investors, reduce the cost to taxpayers and ensure minimal disruption to the wider economy:

“Ensuring all depositors in South Canterbury Finance get their deposits back as quickly as possible will ensure a minimum of disruption to the economy.

“While this will incur an upfront cost, it will ultimately reduce the cost to taxpayers by about $100 million by ensuring the Crown is not liable for interest payments after the date of settlement.

“Furthermore, being in control of the receivership process takes the pressure off the receiver to quickly sell any assets.

“This ensures the Crown can get the best deal for taxpayers. Businesses that owe money, or are owned by South Canterbury, can continue to operate and there will be a minimum of disruption to both the local and national economy.

“The up front cost to the Crown of repaying South Canterbury’s depositors is about $1.6 billion, but we would expect to recover the bulk of that as the receiver sells the assets over time.

“The final expected net cost to the Crown is already provided for in the Crown Accounts within the overall provision of about $900 million for all companies covered by the scheme,” Mr English says.

The $1.6 billion upfront is a huge amount but the ultimate cost to taxpayers will be considerably less than this.

Paying out now allows the repayment of deposits to be mdae quickly, minimises disruption to the wider economy and gives government control of the receivership process. The taxpayer should recoup most of the money after an orderly sale of assets.

Asset sales on campaign agenda

National made it quite clear it would not sell any state assets in its first term in government.

It didn’t rule out the possibility of asset sales if it was re-elected but said that any plans would be announced prior to the next election.

No policy has been announced yet but Prime Minister John Key has indicated that assets sales, possibly partial rather than full, will be on the campaign agenda:

“I have made it quite clear it’s my expectation that we will kick the tyres of that policy,” Mr Key told reporters.

. . . Mr Key said the country had about $212 billion of assets; “and it’s not necessarily always fully allocated in the right place so there may be some merit in having some flexibility in that balance sheet.”

The pledge to not sell anything in this term was made for political reasons but there are good economic reasons for the sale of some state assets.

Risk and return

When the Finance Minister postpones an overseas trip to deal with a finance company investors it will not be to deliver good news.

High returns in investments are almost always matched by high risks.

People investing in South Canterbury Finance, Hubbard Management Funds and Aorangi Securities have had very good returns, now they’re being faced with the realisation that their investments were also high risk.

Apropos of this, Scott at Imperator Fish writes:

… I predict that many of Alan Hubbard’s supporters will turn on him, like sharks who’ve scented the blood of one of their own. He may be a well-meaning old gentleman, but nothing is quite as educational as the pain of losing one’s life-savings.

… we must remember to blame the Government. They acted too slowly. Or did they act too fast in putting Hubbard into statutory management? Does it matter? All this market stuff is confusificating me. . .

It will be more than confusificating for the the people who are concerned about losing money.

 Depositers are covered by the deposit guarantee scheme but they are not the only ones with something to lose if SCF falls over.

The uncertainty over SCF, HMF and AS has shown just how the threads of the various Hubbard entities are woven through rural and provincial South Island. There are valid concerns that if one thread is pulled a lot more will unravel.

August 31 in history

On August 31:

12 Gaius Caligula, Roman Emperor, was born (d. 41).

1218 Al-Kamil became Sultan of Egypt, Syria and northern Mesopotamia on the death of his father Al-Adil.

 

1422  Henry VI became King of England at the age of 9 months.

 

1803 Lewis and Clark started their expedition to the west.

 

1870 Maria Montessori, Italian educator, was born (d. 1952).

1876 Ottoman sultan Murat V was deposed and succeeded by his brother Abd-ul-Hamid II.

1880 Wilhelmina I of the Netherlands, was born (d. 1962).

 

1886 An earthquake killed 100 in Charleston, South Carolina.

1888  Mary Ann Nichols was murdered, the first of Jack the Ripper’s known victims.

1894 The new Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration (IC&A) Act, a flagship policy of Richard Seddon’s Liberal government, made New Zealand the first country in the world to outlaw strikes in favour of compulsory arbitration. There were no major strikes for 11 years and wages and conditions generally improved.

1894 Albert Facey, Australian writer, was born (d. 1982).

1897  Thomas Edison patented the Kinetoscope, the first movie projector.

 

1907 Count Alexander Izvolsky and Sir Arthur Nicolson signed the St. Petersburg Convention, which resulted in the Triple Entente alliance.

 

1918 Alan Jay Lerner, American lyricist, was born (d. 1986).

1920 Polish-Bolshevik War: A decisive Polish victory in the Battle of Komarów.

 

1940 Pennsylvania Central Airlines Trip 19 crashed near Lovettsville, Virginia. The CAB investigation of the accident was the first investigation to be conducted under the Bureau of Air Commerce act of 1938.

1940 Jack Thompson, Australian actor, was born.

1943  The USS Harmon, the first U.S. Navy ship to be named after a black person, was commissioned.

1945 The Liberal Party of Australia was founded by Robert Menzies.

1945 Van Morrison, Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician, was born.

1949 The retreat of the Greek Democratic Army in Albania after its defeat in mountain Grammos marked the end of the Greek Civil War.

1949 Richard Gere, American actor, was born.

1957 The Federation of Malaya (now Malaysia) gained its independence from the United Kingdom.

1958 A parcel bomb sent by Ngo Dinh Nhu, younger brother and chief adviser of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, failed to kill Sihanouk of Cambodia.

1958 Serge Blanco, French rugby union footballer, was born.

1962  Trinidad and Tobago became independent.

1965 Willie Watson, New Zealand cricketer, was born.

1965  The Aero Spacelines Super Guppy aircraft made its first flight.

1974 Leader of the Labour Party since 1965 and Prime Minister from late 1972, Norman Kirk, ‘Big Norm’, died suddenly at the age of 51. He was the fifth New Zealand PM to die in office.

1978 William and Emily Harris, founders of the Symbionese Liberation Army, pleaded guilty to the 1974 kidnapping of

1986 Aeroméxico Flight 498 collided with a Piper PA-28 over Cerritos, California, killing 67 in the air and 15 on the ground.

1986 The Soviet passenger liner Admiral Nakhimov sank in the Black Sea after colliding with the bulk carrier Pyotr Vasev, killing 423.

1991  Kyrgyzstan declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

1992  Pascal Lissouba was inaugurated as the President of the Republic of the Congo .

1993  HMS Mercury, shore establishment of the Royal Navy,  closed after 52 years in commission.

1994 The Provisional Irish Republican Army declared a ceasefire.

1997 Diana, Princess of Wales, her companion Dodi Al-Fayed and driver Henri Paul died in a car crash in Paris.

1998 North Korea reportedly launches Kwangmyongsong, its first satellite.

1999 The first of a series of bombings in Moscow, killing one person and wounding 40 others.

1999 – A LAPA Boeing 737-200 crashed during takeoff from Jorge Newbury Airport in Buenos Aires, killing 65, including 2 on the ground.

 

2005  A stampede on Al-Aaimmah bridge in Baghdad killed 1,199 people.

 

2006 Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream, which was stolen on August 22, 2004, was recovered in a raid by Norwegian police.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

My Three Sons

Fred MacMurray would have been 102 today.

Word of the day

Ultracrepidarian – One who speaks above his/her level of knowledge, experience or expertise

Monday’s quiz

1.What breed of cattle is this?

2. Who said: “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”?

3. Whose third Law of Motion states: “That for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”?

4. In Spanish it’s estrella ; in French it’s étoile, in Italian it’s in Maori it’s whetu – what is it in English?

5. Which poet won the poetry section of this year’s NZ Post Book Awards (announced on Friday) for the book Just This?

Bark Up opens eyes to ag

A few decades ago most people who didn’t live on farms knew people who did.

That meant young people who might be interested in careers  on farms or in farm support had little difficulty in investigating opportunities.

It’s very different now. New Zealand is much more urbanised and a lot of children grow up with little or no idea about career opportunities in agriculture.

Enter the Haka Bark Up which Sally Rae reports introduced 120 year 10 – 13 pupils to agriculture and supporting industries.

Among the pupils Geraldine High School agriculture teacher Margaret Walker took to last year’s Omarama Bark Up was a teenager “with very little focus on life”.

But when he saw the shearing module, his eyes “lit up with a passion”, and now, 12 months down the track, he is about to start an apprenticeship.

That teenager, who would have otherwise dropped out of school, now has introductory qualifications through Tectra.

“Now he’s just waiting to sign on the dotted line for his apprenticeship. You couldn’t ask for a better story. From a kid who was just going to drop out, to a kid with a passion.”

When the ag-sag of the 80s hit job opportunities were lost on farms and in farm support. For a couple of decades agriculture hasn’t been on the radar for a most young people when they’re considering what they want to do when they leave school.

But changes in farming fortunes in recent years, especially but not only in dairying, have led to more employment opportunities.

Initiatives like the Bark Up are good for both young people whose eyes are opened to opportunities in agriculture and the people who could employ them.

Loitering without intent

One of the sorry images which has stayed with me after our return from Australia’s Top End  is the large number of Aborigine people wandering round without purpose, sitting in gutters or on the grass of parks, many waiting for the pubs and bottle stores to open at 2pm, all apparently with nothing to do and nowhere to go.

What does it say about their homes that they’d rather be loitering without intent in town than in their own places doing something constructive?

What does it say about a system which allows them to exist on benefits, leaving them with nothing constructive to do and nowhere else to go?

We saw art work produced by Arorigines and heard of tourist operations run by them but in the 12 days we were there saw only two working – one as a shop assistant, another as a guide.

We were told it wasn’t always as bad as this, many used to work in return for board, keep and some money. But when minimum wages were introduced the employers couldn’t afford to keep many of them because they didn’t do enough to justify what they’d have to be paid.

This should serve as a warning to us – the numbers of young Maori who are unemployed has risen considerably since youth rates were introduced.

Surely it’s better to be working and being paid what you’re worth than on a benefit because you don’t work well enough to earn a minimum wage?

August 30 in history

On August 30:

1363 Beginning date of the Battle of Lake Poyang; the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders— Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang—were pitted against each other in what is one of the largest naval battles in history, during the last decade of the ailing, Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty.

 

1574  Guru Ram Das became the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master.

 

1590  Tokugawa Ieyasu entered Edo Castle.

1720 Samuel Whitbread, English brewer, was born (d. 1796).

 

1791 HMS Pandora sank after running aground on a reef the previous day.

 

1797 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, English writer, was born (d. 1851).

 

1799 Capture of the entire Dutch fleet by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell during the Second Coalition of the French Revolutionary Wars.

1800 Gabriel Prosser led a slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia.

1813  Battle of Kulm: French forces defeated by Austrian-Prussian-Russian alliance.

 

1813  Creek War: Creek Red Sticks carried out the Fort Mims Massacre.

1835 Melbourne was founded.

 

1836 The city of Houston was founded by Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen.

1862  American Civil War: Battle of Richmond: Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith routed a Union army under General Horatio Wright.

1862 – American Civil War: Union forces were defeated in Second Battle of Bull Run.

1871 Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand-born Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate, was born(d. 1937).

1873 – Austrian explorers Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht discover the archipelago of Franz Joseph Land in the Arctic Sea.

1903 Guide Joseph Warbrick and three tourists were killed instantly when Roturua’s Waimangu geyser erupted unexpectedly.

1908 Fred MacMurray, American actor, was born (d. 1991).

1909  Burgess Shale fossils discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott.

1912 Nancy Wake AC GM, New Zealand-born World War II secret agent, was born.

1914  Battle of Tannenberg.

1918  Fanny Kaplan shot and seriously injured Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin.

1922 Battle of Dumlupinar, final battle in Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922).

1930 Warren Buffett, American entrepreneur, was born.

1935 John Phillips, American singer/songwriter (The Mamas & the Papas), was born (d. 2001).

1942  World War II: Battle of Alam Halfa began.

 

1943 Jean-Claude Killy, French skier, was born.

1945 Hong Kong was liberated from Japan by British Armed Forces.

1945 – Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur landed at Atsugi Air Force Base.

1946 Peggy Lipton, American actress, was born.

1951 Dana, Irish singer and politician, was born.

1956 Lake Pontchartrain Causeway opened.

1962  Japan conducted a test of the NAMC YS-11, its first aircraft since the war and its only successful commercial aircraft.

1963 Hotline between the leaders of the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union went into operation.

1967  Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as the first African American Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

1972  Cameron Diaz, American actress, was born.

1974  A Belgrade–Dortmund express train derailed at the main train station in Zagreb killing 153 passengers.

1974 – A powerful bomb exploded at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters in Marunouchi, Tokyo – 8 killed, 378 injured.

1984   The Space Shuttle Discovery took off on its maiden voyage.

1995 – NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Chef

Happy birthday Lenny Henry – 52 today.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

Why don’t they make comedies like this any more?

Mothers shape men

Women of our generation have a responsibility to ensure our sons are brought up differently from their fathers because when they grow up the women of their generation will expect more from them.

This was one of the messages from Jenny Shipley, then a new back bench opposition MP, to a Women In Agriculture day in North Otago.

She was talking to a group of educated country women about ensuring their sons mastered domestic skills, respected women and accepted their right to equality.

Her underlying message, that mothers shape men, has been repeated in a very different context by Celia Lashlie:

. . .  It was as I watched her weep and felt her genuine sorrow and grief that I realised, not for the first time, that in some way I had yet to fully understand the mothers of our at-risk children are part of the answer.”  

Lashlie is sometimes angry and often cynical in The Power of Mothers: Releasing Our Children. . .

It is the third book by the former prison manager who is now a social commentator and agitator.

It is also her last, she says, because now she just wants to get on with the practicalities of finding ways to effectively help disempowered women – and if you do that, you’ll cut down prison rates for men, she says.

. . . One of Lashlie’s key messages, however, is for the women’s prison service.

As of March this year, 496 women were in prison, compared to 8000 or so men. We should lead the world in how we manage these women, she says, “because it is, by and large, the women in prison who are raising the criminals of the next generation”.

I was brought up knowing my father loved and respected my mother; my brothers and I were taught the same values. We all knew that violence and abuse were neither acceptable nor normal and that shaped our expectations of behaviour in our own lives and relationships.

The experiences of most of the women Lashlie works with is very different from that. Violence and abuse are normal for them.

Until and unless they learn it is not, they can not teach their sons to be the loving, caring, responsible people.

Until and unless they learn that they and the people around them have the right to be safe in their homes and communities they can not teach their sons the values which will keep them from violence and crime.

Mothers shape men but shaping good men doesn’t come naturally to those who haven’t experienced loving, caring homes and relationships  themselves. 

They need the knowledge, skills and values to shape themselves and their children into loving, caring, law abiding citizens. Prisons where women are a captive audience and away from the malign influences which are normal to them is a good place to start.

Hat Tip: Beatties Book Blog.

Word of the day

Somnolent – drowsy, slumberous, slumbery, sleepy.

Have you noticed . . .

. . . the late night which seemed such a good idea on Saturday doesn’t seem quite such a good idea on Sunday morning?

Ignorant, arogant or both?

A poll commissioned by The Press shows Jim Anderton leads the Christchurch mayoralty with 50% support over sitting mayor Bob Parker on 31%.

Two thirds of those polled have yet to make up their minds but when the undecideds were prompted  74% named  Anderton, ahead of 61 per cent who picked Parker.

In spite of the odds favouring Anderton winning the race, he’s still adamant he’ll continue to collect his MP’s salary, allowances and the extras he gets as party leaderon top of the Mayoral pay and allowances until the next election.

The ODT added its editorial voice to the calls for his resignation:

. . . by choosing to contest the mayoralty he has surely concluded his career as a politician and “party leader” is without influence and is effectively over.

Why then should the voters of Wigram be deprived of making a new choice, rather than being stuck with a lame duck? Mr Anderton may have miraculous qualities, even at 72, but he cannot properly do both full-time jobs to the level ratepayers and constituents are entitled to expect.

Anderton took umbrage at that and penned a letter to the editor which was published in Friday’s paper:

Your editorial “By-election fever” (ODT 17.8.10) in arguing that I should step down as MP for Wigram because I am a mayoral candidate in Christchurch, serves only to demonstrate that its writer does not really understand what an electorate MP does.

If I took the advice and resigned the almost immediate result would be the closure of my offices in Wigram and Parliament because the funding to run them would terminate. That would leave the many hundreds of people who bring their problems and concerns to those offices, week in and week out, with nowhere to turn for many months. Is that what you editorial writer intends – or have they simply not thought it through?

When I was re-elected for Wigram in 2008, I undertook a commitment to the electors that I would serve them for the next three years and I intend to honour that.

You’d think a man who’d be involved in politics for so long would understand the system but his response shows a disturbing level of either ignorance or arrogance.

It’s not the ODT which hasn’t thought it through, it’s Anderton.

If he resigned the people of Wigram would be without an MP for only the few weeks between his resignation taking effect and the by-election. Then they’d have the services of a brand new fulltime MP not a tired old double-dipping  has-been trying to do two fulltime jobs.

If he doesn’t understand the demands of the jobs mean he can’t properly serve both Wigram electorate as an MP and Christchurch as mayor, he’s not suitable for either position let alone both.

August 29 in history

On August 29:

708 Copper coins were minted in Japan for the first time.

1350  Battle of Winchelsea (or Les Espagnols sur Mer): The English naval fleet under King Edward III defeated a Castilian fleet of 40 ships.

1475  The Treaty of Picquigny ended a brief war between France and England.

1526  Battle of Mohács: The Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificent defeated and kill the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia.

Battle of Mohacs 1526 by Bertalan Székely

1632 John Locke, English philosopher, was born (d. 1704).

1655 Warsaw fell without resistance to a small force under the command of Charles X Gustav of Sweden during The Deluge.

1758  The first American Indian Reservation was established, at Indian Mills, New Jersey.

1786  Shays’ Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, began in response to high debt and tax burdens.

 

1809 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., American physician and writer, was born (d. 1894).

1831  Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction.

1833 The United Kingdom legislated the abolition of slavery in its empire.

1842 Treaty of Nanking signing ended the First Opium War.

1862 Andrew Fisher, 5th Prime Minister of Australia, was born (d. 1928).

1869  The Mount Washington Cog Railway opened, making it the world’s first rack railway.

 

1871  Emperor Meiji ordered the Abolition of the han system and the establishment of prefectures as local centers of administration.

1876 Charles F. Kettering, American inventor, was born (d. 1958).

1885  Gottlieb Daimler patented the world’s first motorcycle.

 

1898 The Goodyear tyre company was founded.

1903 The Russian battleship Slava, the last of the five Borodino-class battleships, was launched.

1907 The Quebec Bridge collapsed during construction, killing 75 workers.

1910  Japan changed Korea‘s name to Chōsen and appoints a governor-general to rule its new colony.

1911  Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerged from the wilderness of northeastern California.

 

1914 New Zealand forces captured German Samoa.

1915 US Navy salvage divers raised F-4, the first U.S. submarine sunk by accident.

1915 Ingrid Bergman, Swedish actress, was born (d. 1982).

1915 Nathan Pritikin, American nutritionist, was born (d. 1985).

1918  Bapaume was taken by New Zealand forces in the Hundred Days Offensive.

1923 Richard Attenborough, English film director, was born.

1924 Dinah Washington, American singer, was born (d. 1963).

1929 Thom Gunn, British poet, was born (d. 2004).

1930  The last 36 remaining inhabitants of St Kilda were voluntarily evacuated to other parts of Scotland.

1943  German-occupied Denmark scuttled most of its navy;Germany dissolved the Danish government.

 

1944  Slovak National Uprising – 60,000 Slovak troops turned against the Nazis.

1949  Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

 

1958 Lenny Henry, British writer, comedian and actor, was born.

1958 Michael Jackson, American pop singer, was born (d. 2009).

1958  United States Air Force Academy opened in Colorado Springs.

1966  The Beatles performed their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

 

1970  Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War. Police riot killed three people, including journalist Ruben Salazar.

1982  The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, was first synthesized at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.

1991 Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union suspended all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.

1991  Libero Grassi, an Italian businessman from Palermo was killed by the Mafia after taking a solitary stand against their extortion demands.

 

1996  Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801, a  Tupolev Tu-154, crashed into a mountain on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, killing all 141 aboard.

1997  At least 98 villagers were killed by the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria GIA in the Rais massacre, Algeria.

2003 Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, and nearly 100 worshippers were assassinated in a terrorist bombing, as they left a mosque in Najaf.

2005  Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing more than 1,836 and causing over $80 billion in damage.

 

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia