TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2018

On this day in history:

1538 - King Henry VIII is excommunicated from the Catholic Church, paving the way for him to establish a new Christian denomination.

1777 - France recognised American independence.

1830 - South American patriot Simon Bolivar died in Colombia.

1845 - After a gruelling journey of 4827km, Leichhardt reaches Port Essington in Australia’s north.

1939 - The German pocket battleship Graf Spee was scuttled by its crew, bringing the World War II Battle of the Rio de la Plata off Uruguay to an end.

1967 - Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt goes missing whilst swimming at Portsea, Victoria.

1973 - Thirty-one people were killed at Rome airport when Arab guerillas hijacked a German airliner.

1992 - Israel deported over 400 Palestinians to Lebanese territory in an unprecedented mass expulsion of suspected militants.

1996 - Peruvian guerrillas took hundreds of people hostage at the Japanese embassy in Lima. The siege ended on April 22, 1997, with a commando raid that resulted in the deaths of all the rebels, two commandos and one hostage.

1996 - The Red Cross pulled all but a few of its western staff out of Chechnya after six foreign aid workers were killed by masked gunmen.

2002 - Congo’s government, opposition parties and rebels signed a peace agreement that ended four years of civil war. Birthdays

Humphry Davy 1778 Joseph Henry 1797

John Greenleaf Whittier 1807

Arthur Fiedler 1896 Erskine Caldwell 1903 Willard Libby 1908

Sy Oliver 1910

Joan Woodbury 1915 Richard Long 1927

Julia Meade (Kunza) 1928 William Safire 1929

Bob Guccione 1930 Armin Mueller-Stahl 1930 Actor

George Lindsey 1935 - Actor Tommy Steele (Rock with the Caveman) 1936

Nat Stuckey 1937