Flashback


Arizona Daily Wildcat
Monday, September 19, 2005

Today

  • 1893 — New Zealand becomes the first country in the world to grant national voting rights to women when Gov. Lord Glasgow signs the Electoral Bill.

  • 1959 — Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev explodes with anger when he learns that he cannot visit Disneyland, marking the climax of Khrushchev’s day in Los Angeles, one that was marked by both frivolity and tension — “And I say, I would very much like to go and see Disneyland. But then, we cannot guarantee your security, they say. Then what must I do? Commit suicide? What is it? Is there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have gangsters taken hold of the place that can destroy me?”

    Tomorrow

  • 1519 — Portuguese navigator Magellan sets sail from Spain in an effort to find a western sea route to the rich Spice Islands of Indonesia. In command of five ships and 270 men, Magellan sailed to West Africa and then to Brazil, where he searched the South American coast for a strait that would take him to the Pacific.

  • 1946 — The first annual Cannes Film Festival opens at the resort city of Cannes on the French Riviera. The outbreak of World War II forced the cancellation of the proposed September 1939 inaugural Cannes.

    Wednesday

  • 1792 – In revolutionary France, the Legislative Assembly votes to abolish the monarchy and establish the First Republic. The measure came one year after King Louis XVI reluctantly approved a new constitution that stripped him of much of his power.

  • 1904 — Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph dies on the Colville Reservation in northern Washington at the age of 64.

  • 1989 — Army Gen. Colin Powell is nominated as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President George H.W. Bush, making Powell the first black to achieve the highest military post.

    Thursday

  • 1598 — Playwright Ben Jonson is indicted for manslaughter after a duel.

  • 1914 — In the North Sea, a German U-9 submarine sinks three British cruisers — the Aboukir, the Hogue and the Cressy — in just over one hour. The one-sided battle, during which 1,400 British sailors lost their lives, alerted the British to the deadly effectiveness of the submarine.

    Friday

  • 1779 — During the American Revolution, the U.S. ship Bonhomme Richard, commanded by John Paul Jones, wins a hard-fought engagement against the British ships of Serapis and Countess of Scarborough off the east coast of England.

  • 1806 — American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return to St. Louis from the first recorded overland journey from the Mississippi River to the Pacific coast and back.

  • 1846 — German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle discovers the planet Neptune at the Berlin Observatory.