TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2017

On this day in history:

1642 - Dutch navigator Abel Tasman sighted New Zealand. 1802 - Charles Robbins successfully dissuades the French from making a claim on Van Diemen’s land (now Tasmania).

1850 - Cleveland in southeast Queensland is proclaimed a township.

1858 - The first balloon flight in Sydney, Australia, takes place. 1913 - It was announced by authorities in Florence, Italy, that the Mona Lisa had been recovered. The work was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1911. 1921 - Britain, France, Japan and the United States signed the Pacific Treaty.

1937 - Japanese forces took the Chinese city of Nanking (Nanjing). An estimated 200,000 Chinese were killed over the next six weeks. The event became known as the Rape of Nanking.

1955 - Australian housewife “superstar”, Dame Edna Everage, makes her stage debut.

1975 - Malcolm Fraser’s Liberal Party wins a landslide 55-seat majority victory over the ALP. 1981 - Authorities in Poland imposed martial law in an attempt to crackdown on the Solidarity labour movement. Martial law ended formally in 1983.

1989 - South African President F.W. de Klerk met for the first time with imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, at de Klerk’s office in Cape Town.

1991 - Five Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union agreed to join the new Commonwealth of Independent States.

1993 - The European Community ratified a treaty creating the European Economic Area (EEA), to go into effect January 1, 1994. 1995 - China’s most influential democracy activist, Wei Jingsheng, who already had spent 16 years in prison, was sentenced to 14 more years. 2001 - Israel severed all contact with Yasser Arafat. Israel also launched air strikes and sent troops into Palestine in response to a bus ambush that killed 10 Israelis.

2001 - Gunmen stormed the Indian Parliament and killed seven people and injured 18. Security forces killed the attackers during a 90-minute gun battle.