HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE
632 – The prophet Mohammed dies.
1809 – Thomas Paine, English political journalist and a founding father of American independence, dies in New York.
1835 – Australian explorer John Batman writes in his diary he has found “the place for a village”.
It later becomes the city of Melbourne.
1849 – The convict ship Hashemy arrives in NSW with 212 convicts. However, because penal transportations to NSW have ended nine years earlier, 4000 people protest, forcing the ship on to Moreton Bay.
1869 – The suction vacuum cleaner is patented by Ives McGaffey of Chicago.
1928 – Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalist army secures the surrender of Beijing after two days.
1940 – British aircraft carrier Glorious and destroyers Ardent and Acasta are sunk by the German battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau off Norway.
More than 1500 men are lost from the three ships.
1941 – Britain and allies invade Syria, then controlled by Vichy French.
1942 – Japanese submarines shell the NSW cities of Sydney and Newcastle during World War II, but cause little damage.
1953 – US Supreme Court rules that restaurants in the District of Columbia cannot refuse to serve blacks.
1962 – Ted Hislop sets an Australian record for pole-sitting – 70 days.
1967 – Some 34 American servicemen are killed when Israeli forces raid the US Navy ship Liberty, stationed in the Mediterranean; Israel calls the attack a tragic mistake.
1968 – James Earl Ray, wanted for the assassination of US civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, is arrested in London.
1969 – Spain closes its border with Gibraltar after Britain refuses to hand over the colony.
1970 – In Argentina, an army coup unseats President Juan Carlos Ongania.
1979 – Hijacker overpowered after taking control of a TAA plane flying between Coolangatta and Brisbane.
1983 – World’s first test-tube triplets born at Flinders Medical Centre, Adelaide.
1986 – Despite allegations he had been involved in Nazi wartime atrocities, Kurt Waldheim is elected president of Austria.
1990 – Czechoslovakia holds its first free elections in 44 years, and Vaclav Havel is elected president.
1993 – Rene Bousquet, former head of police in Nazi-occupied France, is shot and killed in his Paris apartment.
1996 – An American icebreaker churns through pack ice to bring food and supplies to 38 Russians marooned at an Antarctic research base.
1998 – Actor Charlton Heston is elected president of the US National Rifle Association.
2001 – In Japan’s worst mass killing since a poison gas attack in a subway in 1995, a mentally unstable man stabs and kills eight children and wounds 15 teachers and students at a school in Ikeda.
2005 – Ethiopian police open fire on stone-throwing protesters in the centre of the capital, killing 22 people, as unrest mounts over the ruling party’s claim of victory in recent elections.
2006 – After 60 days at sea, Frenchwoman Raphaela le Gouvello becomes the first person to windsurf across the Indian Ocean.
2007 – Hundreds of people flee a sprawling Nairobi shantytown after a violent week-long raid by police searching for the shadowy Mungiki sect accused in a string of beheadings.
2012 – A mob of hundreds of men assault women holding a march demanding an end to sexual harassment.
The attackers overwhelm the male guardians and grope and molest several of the female marchers in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
2013 – Clashes between protesters and militia members in Benghazi, Libya, leads to at least 27 deaths.
2014 – Former military leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is sworn in as Egypt’s president, nearly a year after he ousted the nation’s first freely elected leader.
2015 – The bodies of three fishermen whose boat capsized in Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay are recovered.
2016 – Singapore says it will cut off internet access on government computers within a year for security reasons, a surprise move in one of the world’s most wired countries.
2017 – The “callous” and “cold-blooded” killer of beloved outback nurse Gayle Woodford, Dudley Davey is sentenced to at least 32 years in prison for her murder.
2018 – American celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain is found dead in a hotel room in France, aged 61.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Giovanni Cassini, Italian astronomer (1625-1712); Robert Schumann, German composer (1810-1856); John Millais, British artist (1829-1896); Frank Lloyd Wright, US architect (1869-1959); Francis Crick, British scientist and co-discoverer of DNA structure (1916-2004); Suharto, former Indonesian president (1921-2008); Barbara Bush, former US First Lady (1925- 2018); Jerry Stiller, American comedian (1927-); Joan Rivers, US comedian (1933-2014); Millicent Martin, British actor-singer (1934-); Nancy Sinatra, US singer (1940-); Chuck Negron, US singer of Three Dog Night fame (1942-); Boz Scaggs, US singer (1944-); Sonia Braga, Brazilian actress (1950-); Bonnie Tyler, British singer (1953-); Mick Hucknall, British singer (1960-); Nick Rhodes, British musician (1962-); Rob Pilatus, German “singer” of Milli Vanilli infamy (1965-1998); Julianna Margulies, US actor (1966-); Shilpa Shetty, Indian actor (1975-); Lindsay Davenport, US tennis player (1976-); Kanye West, US rapper (1977-); Kim Clijsters, Belgian tennis player (1983-).
THOUGHT FOR TODAY
Love hath no physic for a grief too deep.
– Robert Nathan, American author and composer (1894-1985).
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