I have not traveled extensively. I’ve been to about 30 US states. Outside of the country, I’ve only been to Canada, Mexico and Barbados, only the former more than once. So I get to “travel” through a number of blogs.
One of the blogs I visit is Nik Durga’s Spatula Forum. Nik is “an American journalist who now lives in New Zealand with my kiwi wife and son.” Somehow, this led me to http://amerinz.blogspot.com/. Arthur is another American expat living in New Zealand, of longer tenure, who writes: “I moved to New Zealand from Chicago in 1995 to be with my partner. I’ve worked in the printing and publishing industries for about twenty years.” It’s possible I found Arthur through Nik’s appearance on Arthur’s podcast, but I don’t recall.
Regardless, Arthur celebrated the third anniversary of his podcast last month, March 28, to be precise. In honor of that, he posed 20 questions, for which he kindly also presented the answers, which people were supposed to send him in order to win a “Kiwi prize pack”; alas, I did not win. Being a tad librarianish, I decided to send along links with the answers, which was not required. It later occurred to me that those links could be the basis of THIS VERY blogpost.
The information will not be in the order that Arthur gave it, since his was intentionally all over the place chronologically.
The Waitangi Treaty was signed February 6, 1840. This “extends to the Natives of New Zealand Her royal protection, and imparts to them all the Rights and Privileges of British subjects.”
The First_Taranaki War, fueled by a land dispute between the Maori and the Europeans,
began on March 17, 1860 and ended on March 18, 1861.
The New Zealand Cross was created on March 10, 1869, important “because New Zealand’s local military were not eligible for the [British] Victoria Cross.”
“New Zealand became the first self-governing nation in the world where women had won the right to vote” on September 19, 1893.
The Brunner mine disaster took place on March 26, 1896.
New Zealand achieved dominion status on September 26, 1907.
There are 453 New Zealand World War I memorials.
An agreement of Australian-New Zealand cooperation was signed in Canberra on January 21, 1944.
The Wahine Shipwreck disaster occurred on April 10, 1968.
The Homosexual Law Reform Act was signed on July 11, and went into effect August 8, 1986.
The first Kiwi to win an Academy Award took place in March 1994, the 21st in Los Angeles, when Anna Paquin was named Best Supporting Actress for “The Piano”. Anna was born in Canada, but raised in New Zealand.
The Prostitution Reform Act was passed in 2003.
Nationwide elections in New Zealand are held every three years, “or earlier, should it be necessary.” At this writing, the ruling party is New Zealand National Party and the leading opposition party is the New Zealand Labour Party.
There are about 13200 km from Chicago, IL US to Auckland, NZ.
As at Tuesday, 20 April 2010 at 02:58:46 am (local time), the estimated resident population of New Zealand was 4,364,669.
Most of the questions Arthur got from New Zealand History online, which celebrated its 11th anniversary last month.
ROG