ON THIS DAY

1842 At the end of an attempted retreat from Kabul, a British force of 9000 men is massacred in the Khyber Pass.

1896 A heatwave in far western NSW causes 47 deaths in Bourke, where temperatures soared above 45C for 13 consecutive days, still a record. The average maximum for the town that month is a record 43.4C.

1898 French author Emile Zola publishes an open letter in the L’Aurore newspaper denouncing the French general staff for its role in the 1894 treason conviction of Jewish French army officer Alfred Dreyfus.

1915 About 30,000 people are killed when an earthquake shakes southern Italy. The town of Avezzano at its epicentre is destroyed.

1923 Boy Charlton breaks the 880-yards freestyle swimming record, clocking 11:05.2 at the NSW championships in Sydney. He takes 19 seconds off the world record.

1930 Explorer Douglas Mawson lands on a small, steep Antarctic island, now called Proclamation Island. He reads a proclamation of British sovereignty over Enderby Land, Kemp Land and MacRobertson Land.

1939 Bushfires ravage almost the entire mountain country of Victoria. More than 70 people are killed and 1500 left homeless by the disaster, dubbed Black Friday.

1941 Irish author James Joyce dies at 59.

1981 Sydney police trap Gregory McHardie in the water at Taronga Park wharf as he tries to collect the Woolworths ransom. McHardie and accomplice Larry Danielson are sentenced to 20 years’ jail. McHardie will serve five years.

2008 Kayakers James Castrission, 25, and Justin Jones, 24, arrive in New Zealand, 62 days after leaving Australia to cross the Tasman.

2010 The luxury liner Costa Concordia hits a reef before sinking off the Italian island of Giglio (pictured).