ON THIS DAY 1923

1688

English privateer William Dampier anchors near Cape Leveque off north-western Australia. He returns 11 years later to be one of the first men to map the Australian coast.

1815

The Francis and Eliza, en route to Australia with 123 convicts, is captured by US privateer Warrior and pillaged. The ship is later allowed to continue its voyage, to reach Sydney on August 8, 1815. It left Cork on December 5 with 54 male convicts and 69 females. En route, two males and four females died.

1853

Solomon Northrup, a free black man who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery, legally obtains his freedom. He later wrote about his experiences in Twelve Years a Slave (1853).

1885

Dr William Grant of Davenport, Iowa, performs what is believed to be the first appendectomy.

1923

Vladimir Ulyanov, aka Lenin (pictured), on his deathbed, writes a note that Josef Stalin cannot be trusted to exercise his power wisely and should be removed as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

1943

Prime Minister John Curtin asks the ALP federal conference in Melbourne to drop the party’s ban on conscription for overseas service. The next day the conference complies, by 24 votes to 12.

1951

North Korean and communist Chinese forces capture South Korean capital, Seoul, for the second time. They hold it until March.

1958

Edmund Hillary, who conquered Mt Everest in 1953, reaches the South Pole with a New Zealand party. 1960

French novelist and playwright Albert Camus, who received the 1957 Nobel prize for Literature, is killed in an car accident.

1967

British driver Donald Campbell, 45, dies trying to break his own world water speed record. His boat disintegrates at 483km/h on Coniston Lake in Lancashire.