TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS FRIDAY, AUGUST 4, 2017

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: 1845 - Australia’s worst civil maritime disaster occurs when the barque Cataraqui is wrecked off King Island, Bass Strait.

1860 - The Sydney Morning Herald reports gold has been found at Lambing Flat, later the scene of Australia’s largest anti-Chinese riots.

1906 - Central Railway Station in Sydney opens.

1914 - Britain declared war on Germany. The US proclaimed its neutrality.

1929 - The first passenger train departs Adelaide on the Ghan railway line to Alice Springs. 1944 - Nazi police raided a house in Amsterdam and arrested eight people. Anne Frank, a teenager at the time, was one of the people arrested. Her diary would be published after her death. 1954 - The uranium rush began in Saskatchewan, Canada. 1957 - Florence Chadwick set a world record by swimming the English Channel in 6 hours and 7 minutes.

1984 - Carl Lewis won a gold medal in the Los Angeles Olympics.

1984 - Upper Volta, an African republic, changed its name to Burkina Faso.

1989 - Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani offered to assist end the hostage crisis in Lebanon.

1990 - The European Community imposed an embargo on oil from Iraq and Kuwait. This was done to protest the Iraqi invasion of the oil-rich Kuwait.

1991 - The Oceanos, a Greek luxury liner, sank off of South Africa’s southeast coast. All of the 402 passengers and 179 crew members survived. 1994 - Yugoslavia withdrew its support for Bosnian Serbs. The border between Yugoslavia and Serb-held Bosnia was sealed.

1996 - Josia Thugwane won a gold medal after finishing first in the marathon. He became the first black South African to win a gold medal.

2001 - Adventurer Steve Fossett makes his fifth attempt to circumnavigate the world in a balloon, launching from Northam, Western Australia. 2009 - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il pardoned two American journalists, arrested and imprisoned for illegal entry earlier in the year.