ON THIS DAY
1642
Dutch navigator Abel Tasman sights Tasmania and calls it Van Diemen’s Land.
1830
Bungaree dies in Sydney. He was prized by early NSW governors as a liaison man with Aborigines and for his humour.
1859
British naturalist Charles Darwin publishes On The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection, explaining his theory of evolution.
1874
American inventor Joseph Farwell Glidden receives a patent for the first commercial barbed wire.
1922
London-born novelist Erskine Childers is shot by an Irish Free State firing squad after being convicted of carrying a small pistol in the Irish Civil War.
1943
Sergeant Thomas Derrick, of the 2/48th Battalion, wins the Victoria Cross at Sattelberg, New Guinea, by rallying comrades and seizing a hilltop with grenades.
1947
The Hollywood Ten, a group of motionpicture producers, directors, and screenwriters who appeared before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in October 1947, are cited for contempt by Congress.
1959
Rugby union and rugby league great Herbert “Dally’’ Messenger, 76, dies at Gunnedah. The Dally M league medal is named for him.
1963
Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shoots Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of US President John F. Kennedy.
1971
Hijacker Dan “D.B.” Cooper parachutes from a Northwest Airlines 727 over Washington state with $US200,000 in ransom. His fate remains unknown.
1991
Queen singer Freddie Mercury (above) dies aged 45.
2007
The Labor Party, led by Kevin Rudd, is swept to power as voters eject the Coalition and Prime Minister John Howard, 68, from his Sydney seat of Bennelong.