40 Fun Facts About New Zealand History

What did a low-flying Cessna drop on the Eden Park pitch during the 1981 Springbok tour's final test?

Flour bombs. One felled All Black prop Gary Knight, yet the rugby went on and New Zealand won 25–22 in what is still called the flour-bomb test.

Which organisation's flagship Rainbow Warrior was sunk by French agents in Auckland harbour in July 1985?

Greenpeace was about to sail the ship to Mururoa to protest French nuclear testing when French secret service agents bombed it, killing photographer Fernando Pereira. France later apologised and paid New Zealand compensation.

News that Hillary and Tenzing had climbed Everest reached Britain on the day of which 1953 event?

The Queen's coronation, on 2 June 1953. The timing doubled the headlines, and before the climbers had even walked out of the mountains the new Queen had made a bemused Hillary a knight.

In which architectural style was Napier rebuilt after the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake devastated the town?

Art Deco was at its fashionable peak when Napier rebuilt in the 1930s, and the quake also lifted the Ahuriri Lagoon, draining land that is now Hawke's Bay Airport. The official death toll was 256.

What swept away a rail bridge over the Whangaehu River at Tangiwai on Christmas Eve 1953, killing 151 people?

A volcanic lahar, released when the rim of Mount Ruapehu's crater lake gave way, knocked out a bridge pier minutes before the express arrived. Motorist Cyril Ellis ran along the track waving a torch to warn the driver.

Edmund Hillary's team reached the South Pole overland in January 1958 driving what unlikely vehicles?

Farm tractors. Hillary's party was there to lay supply depots for Vivian Fuchs's crossing of Antarctica, but with that done he dashed on and beat Fuchs to the Pole by more than two weeks.

New Zealand stayed out of Australia's 1901 federation and took which new status in 1907?

Dominion. The new title took effect in September 1907, and Prime Minister Joseph Ward hoped it would remind the world that New Zealand was not part of Australia.

David Lange told a televised 1985 debate 'I can smell the uranium on it as you lean towards me' at which institution?

Oxford Union. Lange was arguing that nuclear weapons are morally indefensible, and fired the line at a young American on the other side who had pressed him about New Zealand's alliance with the United States.

Which defence treaty did the United States suspend toward New Zealand after it refused the USS Buchanan in 1985?

ANZUS still exists on paper. The United States dropped its security guarantee to New Zealand in 1986 but left the treaty's structure in place, and New Zealand wrote its nuclear-free stance into law the following year.

Britain's 1973 entry into which organisation threatened to shut New Zealand's farm exports out of their biggest market?

The EEC, forerunner of the European Union. Britain had been New Zealand's biggest customer, and its entry ended the old trade preferences, forcing the country to hunt for new markets.

In which country were New Zealand's troops training when the Anzac corps was formed before Gallipoli?

Egypt. The New Zealanders and Australians training there were grouped into one corps under General William Birdwood, and clerks at its headquarters shortened the unwieldy title to a handy code word: ANZAC.

New Zealand's first military action of the First World War, on 29 August 1914, occupied which German colony?

Samoa. German officials offered no resistance when the force landed at Apia, and its commander, Colonel Robert Logan, stayed on to run the islands under a New Zealand military occupation.

Which Antarctic volcano did Air New Zealand Flight 901 fly into on a sightseeing trip in November 1979?

Mount Erebus. A first report pointed at the pilots, but Justice Peter Mahon's inquiry cleared the crew, blamed the airline and accused its managers of 'an orchestrated litany of lies'.

Which West Coast coal mine exploded in November 2010, trapping and killing 29 men underground?

Pike River. A methane explosion on 19 November 2010 trapped the men, and the inquiry that followed led to tougher workplace safety law and a new regulator, WorkSafe New Zealand.

The 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera is blamed for destroying which natural wonder, then New Zealand's top tourist draw?

Pink and White Terraces, famed cascades of silica, vanished in the eruption, which killed about 120 people and buried nearby villages such as Te Wairoa.

The Māori and English texts of the Treaty of Waitangi differ most sharply over the ceding of what?

Sovereignty had no direct equivalent in Māori. The English text cedes 'all the rights and powers' of it, while the Māori text gives the Queen kāwanatanga, a new word for government, and the gap is still argued over.

What name was given to the 1970s police operations that hunted Pacific Island overstayers in their homes?

Dawn raids. Pacific Islanders were only about a third of overstayers yet faced 86% of prosecutions for overstaying, a later study found, and in August 2021 Jacinda Ardern formally apologised on the government's behalf.

What did James Cook name the bay near today's Gisborne where he first landed in October 1769?

Poverty Bay. Cook wrote that the place 'afforded us no one thing we wanted': he left after deadly clashes with local Māori, short of the provisions his crew needed.

Which place near Gisborne did James Cook name after the crewman who first sighted New Zealand from the Endeavour?

Young Nick's Head. Nicholas Young, a ship's boy of about 12, was the first aboard to spot land, which won him the rum Cook had promised and a place on the map.

Which Ngāpuhi chief met George IV in England and swapped the gifts he received for hundreds of muskets?

Hongi Hika kept one royal gift, a suit of armour he later wore into battle, and traded most of the rest in Sydney for the muskets that armed his campaigns in the Musket Wars.

Which missionary preached the first known Christian sermon on New Zealand soil, at Oihi Bay on Christmas Day 1814?

Samuel Marsden had sailed from Sydney in his own brig, the Active, and the chief Ruatara, who had taught him the Māori language, explained the sermon to the congregation.

Which Ngāpuhi chief cut down the British flagstaff at Kororāreka for the fourth time in March 1845, starting a war?

Hōne Heke felled the pole while his ally Kawiti's men attacked the town. Only five years earlier he is said to have been the first chief to sign the Treaty of Waitangi.

Which governor ordered the invasion of the Waikato in July 1863 after Kīngitanga Māori refused his oath of allegiance?

George Grey had prepared for months, having soldiers build the Great South Road to the edge of the Māori King's territory. His 9 July ultimatum to swear allegiance or be evicted gave him his trigger.

Where near Tauranga did about 250 Māori defenders throw back a far larger British force in April 1864?

Gate Pā's defenders withstood a long bombardment, drove back the storming party and slipped away that night past the 68th Regiment. The British took their revenge at Te Ranga weeks later.

Te Whiti and Tohu led non-violent resistance from which Taranaki village, invaded by 1,600 troops in November 1881?

Parihaka's ploughmen had fanned out across confiscated land to assert Māori ownership. After the invasion Te Whiti and Tohu were arrested, much of the village was destroyed and most of its people were driven out.

Who found gold in a creek bed in a gully near Lawrence, setting off the Otago gold rush in May 1861?

Gabriel Read, a veteran of the Californian and Victorian diggings, found it in the gully that still bears his name, 'shining like the stars in Orion on a dark frosty night'.

What did the Chinese Immigrants Act 1881 impose on each Chinese person entering New Zealand, apologised for in 2002?

A £10 poll tax, with ships limited to one Chinese passenger for every 10 tons of cargo. The tax was raised to £100 in 1896 and was not repealed until 1944.

Who made Okiato in the Bay of Islands New Zealand's first capital in 1840, then moved it to Auckland?

William Hobson. He bought the site and named it Russell after Britain's colonial secretary, then shifted the capital to Auckland the following year; the name Russell later passed to nearby Kororāreka.

Which premier died at sea in 1906 on his voyage home to New Zealand after thirteen years in office?

Richard Seddon, nicknamed 'King Dick' for his autocratic style, had just cabled Victoria's premier the words 'Just leaving for God's own country' when he died aboard the Oswestry Grange.

Which prime minister helped a family carry their furniture into the first of his government's state houses in Miramar?

Michael Joseph Savage led the first Labour government from 1935 until he died in office in 1940, and for decades afterwards his portrait hung on the walls of New Zealand homes.

Which Gallipoli height did the Wellington Battalion seize early on 8 August 1915, only for it to be lost two days later?

Chunuk Bair was all but undefended when the Wellingtons climbed it, but they were soon raked by fire from the neighbouring heights, and their commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Malone, was killed that evening by shellfire from his own side.

Which walled French town did New Zealand troops liberate on 4 November 1918 by scaling its ramparts with a ladder?

Le Quesnoy fell after a party led by Second Lieutenant Leslie Averill climbed the old fortress walls by the mill sluicegate, a week before the Armistice; the town's New Zealand museum is named Te Arawhata, 'The Ladder'.

Bernard Freyberg led the Allied defence of which Mediterranean island against German airborne landings in May 1941?

Crete's defenders knew the attack was coming, because Allied codebreakers had read the German plans. The paratroopers suffered appalling losses in the drop, yet they still took the island in under two weeks.

Which prime minister, slurring his words before the television cameras, called a snap election for 14 July 1984 and lost it?

Robert Muldoon gambled after his own MP Marilyn Waring said she would back Labour's nuclear-free bill. The contest became known as the 'schnapps election', and David Lange's Labour won it by 56 seats to 37.

Which finance minister gave his name to the free-market reforms of the Labour government New Zealand elected in 1984?

Roger Douglas's 'Rogernomics', a play on Reaganomics, came from a Labour government. In 1993 he co-founded the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers, which became the free-market ACT Party.

Which voting system, used for most of New Zealand's history, did voters reject for MMP in 1992 and 1993 referendums?

First past the post had kept National in power in 1978 and 1981 even though Labour won more votes nationwide both times, and the anger that caused fed the long campaign for a fairer system.

Who became New Zealand's first woman prime minister in December 1997 by ousting Jim Bolger in a party-room coup?

Jenny Shipley planned her coup carefully and had the numbers in the National caucus before she struck. Two years later she lost the 1999 election to Helen Clark, the first woman voted into the job.

After nine years as prime minister, Helen Clark left Parliament in 2009 to become the first woman to head which body?

The UN Development Programme kept Clark in New York for eight years, until 2017. In 2016 she aimed higher still and stood for UN secretary-general, without success.

Which Auckland site did Māori protesters occupy for 506 days until police and soldiers cleared it in May 1978?

Bastion Point was former Ngāti Whātua reserve land earmarked for housing. Police and soldiers removed 222 people, but after a Waitangi Tribunal inquiry in the 1980s much of the land was returned to the iwi.

Which prime minister sent the frigates Otago and Canterbury into the French nuclear test zone at Mururoa in 1973?

Norman Kirk wanted a Cabinet minister aboard for the protest, so he put all their names into a hat and drew out Fraser Colman. Kirk died suddenly in office the following year, aged 51.