TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2017

On this day in history:

1774 - Austria became the first nation to introduce a state education system.

1784 - Transportation of convicts from England to Australia is first authorised.

1797 - George Bass discovers the Kiama blowhole, on the New South Wales coast.

1813 - George Evans discovers and names the fertile Macquarie Plains and the Macquarie River.

1877 - Thomas Edison demonstrated the first gramophone, with a recording of himself reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb.

1917 - Finland proclaimed independence from Russia. 1921 - The Catholic Irish Free State was created as a self-governing dominion of Britain when an Anglo-Irish treaty was signed.

1926 - In Italy, Benito Mussolini introduced a tax on bachelors. 1982 - 11 soldiers and 6 civilians were killed when a bomb exploded in a pub in Ballykelly, Northern Ireland. The Irish National Liberation Army was responsible for planting the bomb.

1983 - In Jerusalem, a bomb planted on a bus exploded killing six Israelis and wounding 44.

1989 - The worst mass shooting in Canadian history occurred when a man gunned down 14 women at the University of Montreal’s school of engineering. The man then killed himself.

1989 - Egon Krenz resigned as leader of East Germany. 1990 - Iraq announced that it would release all its 2,000 foreign hostages.

1992 - In India, thousands of Hindu extremists destroyed a mosque. The following two months of Hindu-Muslim rioting resulted in at least 2000 people being killed.

1997 - A Russian Antonov 124 military transport crashed into a residential area in Irkutsk, Russia, shortly after takeoff. 70 people were killed.

1998 - In Venezuela, former Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez was elected president. He had staged a bloody coup attempt against the government six years earlier. 2002 - Officials released the detailed plans for a $4.7 million memorial commemorating Princess Diana. The large oval fountain was planned to be constructed in London’s Hyde Park.