TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 17

On this day in history:

1654 - A meteorological office established in Tuscany began recording daily temperature readings.

1810 - Governor Lachlan Macquarie introduces a building code into the New South Wales colony.

1815 - Jane Austen’s Emma was published.

1840 - Napoleon Bonapart’s remains were interred in Les Invalides in Paris, having been brought from St. Helena, where he died in exile.

1961 - Former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death in Jerusalem by an Israeli court. He had been tried on charges for organisation the deportation of Jews to concentration camps.

1961 - The UN General Assembly voted against a Soviet proposal to admit Communist China as a member.

1964 - Canada’s House of Commons approved a newly designed flag thereby dropping the Canadian “Red Ensign” flag. 1966 - Walter Elias “Walt” Disney died in Los Angeles at the age of 65.

1973 - J. Paul Getty III was found in southern Italy after being held captive for five months, during which his right ear was cut off and sent to a newspaper in Rome.

1982 - Gibraltar’s frontier with Spain was opened to pedestrian use after 13 years.

1989 - An uprising in Romania began as demonstrators gathered to prevent the arrest of the Reverend Laszlo Tokes, a dissident clergyman.

1992 - Bettino Craxi, the leader of Italy’s Socialist Party, was informed that he was under investigation in a burgeoning corruption scandal in the northern city of Milan.

1992 - El Salvador’s government and leftist guerrilla leaders formally declared the end of the country’s 12-year civil war. 1993 - In Geneva, 117 countries completed the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The countries agreed on a reform package. 1993 - The prime ministers of Britain and the Republic of Ireland (John Major and Albert Reynolds respectively) made the “Downing Street Declaration,” stating the basis for trying to achieve peace in Northern Ireland.

2000 - The Chernobyl atomic power plant in Kiev, Ukraine, was shut down.

2014 - Sydney is gripped by a siege that lasts almost 17 hours and leaves three dead.