Word of the day

Cryptozoology – the search for and study of animals whose existence or survival is disputed or unsubstantiated, such as the Loch Ness monster and the yeti; the study of evidence tending to substantiate the existence of, or the search for, creatures whose reported existence is unproved.

Rural round-up

Enterprising Rural Women Award 2015 winners announced:

Joanne Taylor’s rural lifestyle magazine Latitude has won the supreme award at the Enterprising Rural Women Awards held in Nelson on Saturday 21 November.

“In the seven years of this competition we have seen vibrant rural businesses increasingly appeal to urban residents, tourists and the rural community. This has been reflected in the winning rural business woman : who has succeeded in pursuing her publishing dream, while also supporting New Zealand’s rural communities,” says Wendy McGowan, National President, Rural Women New Zealand.

Joanne Taylor was the NZ Post sponsored ‘Making it in Rural’ category winner; however, there were three other exceptional category winners: . . .

Thinking pink helps raise funds for hospice support – Sally Rae:

Tom Ballantine has been through a rough patch.

Not only did the Invercargill man lose his daughter, Paula Dempster, to cancer in December last year, but his wife, Lorraine, died in February this year, also succumbing to the disease.

”It’s been a really, really torrid time,” Mr Ballantine (71) said.

What has helped keep him occupied has been a fundraising initiative, selling pink singlets to those in the wool harvesting industry, with $2 from each sale going to boost hospice coffers. . . .

Trust head promotes wool with a passion – Sally Rae:

Wool is a fibre that ”easily ticks all the boxes”.

What now needed to happen was a concerted effort on getting that message out to discerning consumers, Campaign For Wool New Zealand Trust chairwoman Philippa Wright said.

Ms Wright, who is boss of Waipukurau-based woolbroker Wright Wool, has been involved with Campaign for Wool since its inception in 2010. . . 

JUSTICE for Mary Jane Veloso, JUSTICE for Filipino Dairy Workers in NZ and All Victims of Illegal Recruiters:

We applaud Indonesia’s moratorium on executions as we in the Filipino-Kiwi communities in New Zealand were among those who prayed and petitioned for the life of human trafficking victim Mary Jane Veloso. Mary Jane’s plight generated massive support from citizens around the globe. This young mother of two on the brink of execution on drug trafficking charges became the face of many other Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) on death row and those exploited by illegal recruiters and abusive employers. We hope that freedom and justice for Mary Jane will be the next good news.

In New Zealand, over 1000 Filipino migrant workers are now greatly distressed as they experience their lives hanging in the dairy farms. Last October, Immigration NZ arrested a dual Filipino/New Zealand national on fraud charges. This recruiter used false employer details and false documents on workers’ experience, asking huge fees from the applicants wanting to work in NZ. We hope Filipinos back home would be aware of this scam and be careful not to be victimised by recruiters who take advantage of their desperate need to find better jobs in NZ and elsewhere. . . 

Quote of the day

It’s so much easier to know who you are when there aren’t a thousand people telling you who they think you are. –Miley Cyrus who celebrates her 23rd birthday today.

November 23 in history

534 BC – Thespis of Icaria became the first actor to portray a character onstage.

1227 – Polish Prince Leszek I the White was assassinated at an assembly of Piast dukes at Gąsawa.

1248 – Conquest of Seville by the Christian troops under King Ferdinand III of Castile.

1499 – Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck was hanged for reportedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London.

1531 – The Second war of Kappel resulted in the dissolution of the Protestant alliance in Switzerland.

1644 – John Milton published Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship.

1808 – French and Poles defeated the Spanish at battle of Tudela.

1844 – Independence of the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark.

1859 Billy The Kid, American outlaw, was born (d. 1881).

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Chattanooga began.

1867 – The Manchester Martyrs were hanged for killing a police officer while freeing two Irish nationalists from custody.

1876 –  Tammany Hall leader William Marcy Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) was delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain.

1887  Boris Karloff, British actor, was born (d. 1969).

1888 Harpo Marx, American comedian, was born (d. 1964).

1889 – The first jukebox went into operation at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco.

1890 – King William III of the Netherlands died without a male heir and a special law was passed to allow his daughter Princess Wilhelmina to become his heir.

1903 – Governor of Colorado James Peabody sent the state militia into the town of Cripple Creek to break up a miners’ strike.

1909 – Nigel Tranter, Scottish historian and author, was born, (d. 2000).

1910 – Johan Alfred Ander was the last person in Sweden to be executed.

1914 – Mexican Revolution: The last of U.S. forces withdrew from Veracruz.

1918 – Heber J. Grant succeeded Joseph F. Smith as the seventh president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

1934 – An Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission in the Ogaden discovered an Italian garrison at Walwal, well within Ethiopian territory which led to the Abyssinia Crisis.

1936 – The first edition of Life was published.

1940 – World War II: Romania became a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers.

1943 – World War II: The Deutsche Opernhaus on Bismarckstraße in the Berlin was destroyed.

1946 – French Navy fire in Hai Phong, Viet Nam, killed 6,000 civilians.

1947 A civic funeral was held for the 41 victims of the Ballantynes Fire.

1949  Sandra Stevens, British singer, member of pop group Brotherhood of Man, was born.

1955 – The Cocos Islands were transferred from the control of the United Kingdom to Australia.

1959 – General Charles de Gaulle,  declared in a speech in Strasbourg his vision for a “Europe, “from the Atlantic to the Urals.”

1963 – The BBC broadcast the first episode of Doctor Who (starringWilliam Hartnell) which is the world’s longest running science fiction drama.

1971 – Representatives of China attended the United Nations, for the first time.

1976 – Apneist Jacques Mayol was the first man to reach a depth of 100 m undersea without breathing equipment.

1979 –  Provisional Irish Republican Army member Thomas McMahon was sentenced to life in prison for the assassination of Lord Mountbatten.

1980 – A series of earthquakes in southern Italy killed approximately 4,800 people.

1981 – Iran-Contra Affair: Ronald Reagan signed the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the Central Intelligence Agency the authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

1985 – Gunmen hijacked EgyptAir Flight 648,  when the plane landed in Malta, Egyptian commandos stormed the  jetliner, but 60 people died in the raid.

1992  Miley Cyrus, American actress and singer/songwriter, was born.

1993 – Rachel Whiteread won both the £20,000 Turner Prize award for best British modern artist and the £40,000 K Foundation art award for the worst artist of the year.

1996 – Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was hijacked, then crashed into the Indian Ocean after running out of fuel, killing 125.

2001 – Convention on Cybercrime was signed in Budapest.

2003 – Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze resigned following weeks of mass protests over flawed elections.

2005 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected president of Liberia and became the first woman to lead an African country.

2007 – MS Explorer, a cruise liner carrying 154 people, sank in the Antarctic Ocean south of Argentina after hitting an iceberg. There were no fatalities.

2009 – The Maguindanao massacre.

2010 – The Bombardment of Yeonpyeong  on Yeonpyeong Island, South Korea. The North Korean artillery attack killed 2 civilians and 2 South Korean marines.

2011 –  Arab Spring: After 11 months of protests in Yemen, The Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh signed a deal to transfer power to the vice president, in exchange for legal immunity.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia