TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS FRIDAY, JULY 20, 2018

On this day in history:

1797 - Polish explorer Strzelecki, who first climbed and named Mt Kosciuszko, Australia’s highest mountain, is born.

1851 - Gold discoveries at Mt Alexander spark the goldrush in Victoria.

1944 - An attempt by a group of German officials to assassinate Adolf Hitler failed. The bomb exploded at Hitler’s Rastenburg headquarters. Hitler was only wounded. 1961 - Stop the World, I Want to Get Off opened in London. 1969 - Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. became the first men to walk on the moon.

1974 - Turkish forces invaded Cyprus.

1976 - America’s Viking I robot spacecraft made a successful landing on Mars.

1985 - Treasure hunters began raising $400 million in coins and silver from the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha. The ship sank in 1622 40 miles of the coast of Key West, FL.

1992 - Vaclav Havel, the playwright who led the Velvet Revolution against communism, stepped down as president of Czechoslovakia.

1998 - Russia won a $11.2 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to help avert the devaluation of its currency. 2003 - In India, elephants used for commercial work began wearing reflectors to avoid being hit by cars during night work.

2005 - Canada legalised same-sex marriage, being the fourth country in the world to do so.

2012 - James Holmes opened fire at a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 and injuring 70 others.

2013 - Seventeen government soldiers are killed in an attack by FARC revolutionaries in the Colombian department of Arauca.

2015 - A huge explosion in the mostly Kurdish border town of Suruç, Turkey, targeting the Socialist Youth Associations Federation, kills at least 31 people and injures over 100. 2017 - O. J. Simpson is granted parole to be released from prison after serving nine years of a 33-year sentence after being convicted of armed robbery in Las Vegas.