ON THIS DAY
1415 The English, led by Henry V, score a big victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt.
1586 Mary Queen of Scots is sentenced to death.
1616 Dutch mariner Dirk Hartog lands on Australia’s west coast. He leaves a pewter plate inscribed with details of his ship and crew. 1794
Four of five “Scottish Martyrs’’, sentenced for sedition in Britain, arrive on the Surprize. Thomas Muir, Thomas Fyshe Palmer, William Skirving and Maurice Margarot promoted ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Muir escapes in 1796 to the US, Skirving dies that year in Sydney and Margarot returns to England in 1810.
1854 The British Light Brigade charges Russian cannons at Balaclava. The much-eulogised charge in the Crimean War is a mistake, killing hundreds of cavalrymen.
1911 Armoured cruiser HMAS Australia is launched in Glasgow by Lady Reid, wife of high commissioner George Reid, just three months after the RAN is founded.
1936 Italy and Germany establish the RomeBerlin Axis.
1955 The first domestic microwave ovens go on sale.
1966 An Australian Army interrogator holds a suspected spy’s nose and pours water down her throat at Nui Dat in the Vietnam War. The torture is covered up but admitted by prime minister John Gorton in March 1968.
1983 The US military, under President Ronald Reagan, invades the tiny island country of Grenada.
1984 Australian drugs tsar Robert Trimbole, 53, (above) is arrested in Dublin, under the name Michael Hanbury, on suspicion of possessing a firearm. Efforts to extradite him fail.
2004 Australia has its first military casualties in Iraq when three soldiers are wounded by a bomb.