March 15 in history

On March 15:

44 BC Julius Ceasar was stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March.

 

221 Liu Bei, a Chinese warlord and member of the Han royal house, declares himself emperor of Shu-Han and claims his legitimate succession to the Han Dynasty.

351 Constantius II elevated his cousin Gallus to Caesar, and puts him in charge of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire.

933  After a ten-year truce, German King Henry I defeated a Hungarian army at the Battle of Riade.

1311 Battle of Halmyros: The Catalan Company defeated Walter V of Brienne to take control of the Duchy of Athens. 

1493  Christopher Columbus returned to Spain after his first trip to the Americas.

1545 First meeting of the Council of Trent.

 

1672 Charles II issued the Royal Declaration of Indulgence.

1767  Andrew Jackson, 7th President of the United States, was born.

1776 South Carolina became the first American colony to declare its independence from Great Britain and set up its own government.

1779 Lord Melbourne, (William Lamb) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,, was born.

1781 Battle of Guilford Courthouse: 1,900 British troops under General Charles Cornwallis defeated an American force numbering 4,400.

1783 George Washington asked his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. The plea was successful and the threatened coup d’état never eventuated.

 The Newburgh Address.

1809 Joseph Jenkins Roberts, first President of Liberia, was born.

1844 The New Zealand Company ended its colonising efforts.

1848 Revolution broke out in Hungary.

 

1877 The first cricket test started between England and Australia.

1906 Rolls-Royce Limited was incorporated.

1916 President Woodrow Wilson sent 12,000 United States troops over the U.S.-Mexico border to pursue Pancho Villa.

1917 Czar Nicholas II of Russia abdicated the Russian throne and his brother the Grand Duke Michael becomes Tsar.

1922  Fuad I becomes King of Egypt.

1926 The dictator Theodoros Pangalos was elected President of Greece without opposition.

 

1931 SS Viking exploded off Newfoundland, killing 27 of the 147 on board.

1933 Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss kept members of the National Council from convening, starting the austrofascist dictatorship.

1939 German troops occupied the remaining part of Bohemia and Moravia; Czechoslovakia ceased to exist.

1941 Mike Love, American musician (The Beach Boys), was born.

1943  Third Battle of Kharkov – Germans retook the city of Kharkov from the Soviet armies in bitter street fighting.

 

1944 Sly Stone, American musician, was born.

1944 New Zealand forces captured Castle Hill  during the Battle of Monte Cassino.

 1952 In Cilaos, Réunion, 1870 mm (73 inches) of rain falls in one day, setting a new world record.

1961 South Africa withdraws from the Commonwealth of Nations.

1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to the Selma crisis, told U.S. Congress “We shall overcome” while advocating the Voting Rights Act.

1985 The first Internet domain name is registered (symbolics.com).

1988 The Halabja poison gas attack of the Iran–Iraq War began.

1990 Iraq hung British journalist Farzad Bazoft for spying.

1990 Mikhail Gorbachev was elected as the first executive president of the Soviet Union.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

February 1 in history

On February 1:

1327 Teenaged Edward III was crowned King of England, but the country was ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer.

1662 Chinese general Koxinga seized the island of Taiwan after a nine-month siege.

1663 Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo, Filipino foundress of the Religious of the Virgin Mary, was born.

1790 The Supreme Court of the United States attempted to convene for the first time.

1793 French Revolutionary Wars: France declared war on the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

1814 Mayon Volcano, in the Philippines, erupted, killing around 1,200 people.

1842 The Fifeshire arrived in Nelson with the first immigrants for the New Zealand Company’s latest venture, which followed the settlement of Wellington, New Plymouth and Wanganui.

1861 Texas seceded from the United States.

1862 Julia Ward Howe‘s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was published for the first time in the Atlantic Monthly.

 

1865 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

1973 John Barry, Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, was born.

1884 Edition one of the Oxford English Dictionary was published.

1893 Thomas A. Edison finishes construction of the first motion picture studio, the Black Maria in West Orange, New Jersey.

1896 The opera La bohème premieresd in Turin.

 Mimì’s costume for act 1 of La bohème designed by Adolf Hohenstein for the world premiere

1897 Shinhan Bank, the oldest bank in South Korea, opened in Seoul.

1901 Clark Gable, American actor, was born.

1908 King Carlos I of Portugal and his son, Prince Luis Filipe are killed in Terreiro do Paco, Lisbon.

 

1918 Muriel Spark, Scottish author, was born.

1920 The Royal Canadian Mounted Police began operations.

1931 Boris Yeltsin, 1st President of the Russian Federation, was born.

1934 Bob Shane, American folk singer (The Kingston Trio), was born.

1937 Don Everly, American musician (Everly Brothers), was born.

1937 Ray Sawyer, American singer (Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show), was born.

1942 Vidkun Quisling was appointed Premier of Norway by the Nazi occupiers.

1943 The German 6th Army surrendered at Stalingrad.

1946 Trygve Lie of Norway was picked to be the first United Nations Secretary General.

1957 Felix Wankel‘s first working prototype DKM 54 of the Wankel engine was running at the NSU research and development department Versuchsabteilung TX in Germany.

 

1958 Egypt and Syria merge to form the United Arab Republic, which lasted until 1961.

1958 The United States Army launched Explorer 1.

1960 Four black students stage the first of the Greensboro sit-ins.

1965 The Hamilton River in Labrador, Canada was renamed the Churchill River in honour of Winston Churchill.

1968 – Canada’s three military services, the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force, were unified into the Canadian Forces.

1972  Kuala Lumpur becomes a city by a royal charter granted by the Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.

Flag

1974 A fire in the 25-story Joelma Building in Sao Paulo killed 189 and injures 293.

1979 – The Ayatollah Khomeini was welcomed back into Tehran after nearly 15 years of exile.

 

1981 Trans-Tasman sporting relations reached breaking point at the Melbourne Cricket Ground when Australian captain Greg Chappell ordered his brother Trevor to bowl underarm (along the ground) for the final delivery of a limited-overs cricket international against New Zealand.

1989 The Western Australian towns of Kalgoorlie and Boulder amalgamate to form the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

1992 The Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal court declares Warren Anderson, ex-CEO of Union Carbide, a fugitive under Indian law for failing to appear in the Bhopal Disaster case.

1996 The Communications Decency Act was passed by the U.S. Congress.

1998 Rear Admiral Lillian E. Fishburne became the first female African American to be promoted to rear admiral.

2003 – Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

2004 251 people were trampled to death and 244 injured in a stampede at the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

2005 King Gyanendra exercised a coup d’état to capture Neapl, becoming Chairman of the Councils of ministers.

2005 – Canada introduced the Civil Marriage Act, making Canada the fourth country to sanction same-sex marriage

2009 Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir was elected as the first female Prime Minister of Iceland, becoming the first openly gay head of state in the modern world.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

January 3 in history

On January 3:

106 BC Cicero, Roman statesman and philosopher, was born.

1431  Joan of Arc was handed over to the Bishop Pierre Cauchon.

 

1496 Leonardo da Vinci unsuccessfully tested a flying machine.

 

 A design for a flying machine.

 

1521 – Pope Leo X excommunicatesdMartin Luther in the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem.

1793 Lucretia Mott, American women’s rights activist (, was born.

1823 Stephen F. Austin received a grant of land in Texas from the government of Mexico.

1831 Savitribai Phule, Female social activist, first female teacher in India, and first female poet in Marathi language, was born.

1840 Surveyors arrived in Port Nicholson to lay out plans for the proposed New Zealand Company settlement of Britannia at Pito-one (Petone). When this original site proved unsuitable, the decision was made to relocate across the harbour in a settlement they called Wellington.

 

 

1848 – Joseph Jenkins Roberts was sworn in as the first president of the independent African Republic of Liberia.

1870 Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge began.

1883  Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was born.

1887 Helen Parkhurst, American educator, was born.

 

1888 The refracting telescope at the Lick Observatory, measuring 91 cm in diameter, was used for the first time. It was the largest telescope in the world at the time.

1892  J. R. R. Tolkien, British writer (, was born.

1899 – The first known use of the word automobile, was seen in an editorial in The New York Times.

1909  Victor Borge, Danish entertainer, was born.

1916 Maxene Andrews, American singer (The Andrews Sisters), was born.

1922  Bill Travers, British actor and director, was born.

1923 Charles Tingwell, Australian actor, was born.

1924 British explorer Howard Carter discovered the sarcophagus of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor, Egypt.

1933 Minnie D. Craig became the first female elected as Speaker of the North Dakota House of Representatives, the first female to hold a Speaker position anywhere in the United States.

1942  John Thaw, British actor, was born.

1945  Stephen Stills, American musician (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) was born.

1946 John Paul Jones, British musician (Led Zeppelin), was born.

1950  Victoria Principal, American actress, was born.

1953 Frances Bolton and her son, Oliver from Ohio, became the first mother and son to serve simultaneously in the U.S. Congress.

1956 A fire damaged the top part of the Eiffel Tower.

1956  Mel Gibson, Australian actor and director, was born.

1957 The Hamilton Watch Company introduces the first electric watch.

1958 The West Indies Federation was formed.

1961 The United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba.

1962 Pope John XXIII excommunicated Fidel Castro.

1977 Apple Computer was incorporated.

1988 Margaret Thatcher became the longest-serving British Prime Minister in the 20th Century.

1990 Former leader of Panama Manuel Noriega surrendered to American forces.

 

1993 George H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin signed the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

 1994 – More than seven million people from the former Apartheid Homelands, received South African citizenship.

 1999 The Mars Polar Lander was launched.

 

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

August 17 in history

On August 17:

1786 Davy Crockett was born

1839 The New Zealand Company ship Tory arrived in New Zealand.

1893 Mae West was born.

Mae West in I’m No Angel (1933

1943 US actor Robert De Niro was born.

1944 Oracle Corporation CEO Larry Ellison was born.

1945 Indonesian indpendence was declared.

1959 Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, the best selling jazz album yet, was released.

1982 the first compact discs were released to the public.

Sourced from Wikipedia & NZ History Online.