Today In History 4 4

HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY ON THIS DATE

1406 - King Robert III of Scotland dies and is succeeded by James I, who was being held prisoner by the English.

1581 - Francis Drake arrives back in England after circumnavigating the globe and is knighted by Queen Elizabeth I on board his ship, the Golden Hind.

1611 - Denmark's King Christian IV declares war on Sweden.

1617 - John Napier, Scottish mathematician who invented the concept of logarithms, dies.

1818 - US Congress decides the American flag will consist of 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars, with a new star to be added for every new state of the Union.

1844 - Germany occupies South-West Africa, Togoland and Cameroons.

1883 - State Premier Thomas McIlwraith claims British New Guinea as a Queensland possession; the claim is later disallowed by Britain.

1905 - An earthquake strikes the province of Lahore, then part of India, killing 19,000 people.

1912 - Chinese republic is proclaimed in Tibet.

1929 - Fourteen die when a dam on the Cascade River, Tasmania, bursts and floods the town of Derby.

1932 - US researcher Professor CG King of Pittsburgh isolates vitamin C for the first time.

1949 - NATO is founded when the North Atlantic Treaty is signed in Washington.

1964 - The Beatles set a record by having all of the top five US singles at the same time.

1968 - US civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

1975 - About 155 children die when a US Air Force transport plane carrying Vietnamese orphans crashes on take-off from Saigon.

1979 - Pakistan's former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, ousted by the military in a coup 21 months earlier, is hanged.

1983 - The US space shuttle Challenger roars into orbit on its maiden flight.

1994 - Serbs launch major attack on besieged Muslim enclave Gorazde.

1996 - A military judge in Rome orders former Nazi SS Captain Erich Priebke to stand tour sapa từ hà nội trial for his role in the massacre of 335 civilians in World War II.

1999 - NATO warplanes and missiles attack an army headquarters, oil refineries and other targets in Yugoslavia.

2001 - Sudan's defence minister and 14 other military officials are killed when their plane crashes on takeoff.

2003 - US forces seize control of Baghdad's Saddam International Airport and rename it Baghdad International.

2006 - Women make history in Kuwait by voting and running for office for the first time in a local by-election.

2007 - Restrictions on cross-media and foreign ownership rules are lifted in Australia.

2010 - Nine miners are pulled to safety after spending more than a week trapped in a flooded coal mine in northern China.

2013 - Chris Bailey, bass player for Australian band The Angels, dies aged 62 after fighting throat cancer.

2017 - The Australian Electoral Commission is asked to investigate whether Pauline Hanson's One Nation breached financial disclosure laws after it emerged donated money was used to buy a light aircraft.

2018 - The US marks 50 years since the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King.

2019 - Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg describes the people vandalising his campaign posters with Hitler references as "cowards".

TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS

Grinling Gibbons, English sculptor (1648-1721); Max Dupain, Australian photographer (1911-1992); Muddy Waters, US blues musician (1913-1983); Marguerite Duras, tour sapa từ hà nội French writer (1914-1996); Anthony Perkins, US actor (1932-1992); Christine Lahti, US actress (1950-); Hugo Weaving, Australian actor (1960-); Robert Downey Jr, US actor (1965-); Sam Moran, Australian children's entertainer (1978-); Heath Ledger, Australian actor (1979-2008); Grumpy Cat, US internet-celebrity feline (2012-2019).

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea.

- Medgar Evers, murdered American civil rights activist (1926-1963).