TODAY IN HISTORY

1571 A Turkish fleet is destroyed by Christian forces commanded by Don John of Austria at the Battle of Lepanto. About 30,000 men die

1798 George Bass and Matthew Flinders leave Sydney on the small sloop Norfolk, built on Norfolk Island, to check that Van Diemen’s Land is separated from mainland Australia

1817 The first Methodist chapel in Australia is opened at Castlereagh, north of Penrith. by Reverend Samuel Leigh.

1858 Englishman William Jevons, who will become one of the world’s great economists, has a damning report published anonymously in Sydney on sanitation at The Rocks. He says lack of drains lets sewage flow into homes

1916 Taronga Zoo opens at its present site. Elephants and other animals cross the Harbour by flat-top barge from an old zoo in Moore Park

1959 Soviet spacecraft Luna-3 takes the first photographs of the far side of moon

1985 Members of the Palestine Liberation Front hijack an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro. One passenger is murdered the next day

2001 Asylum seekers are accused of throwing their children overboard from an Indonesian peoplesmuggling craft. Prime Minister John Howard says his government will not be bullied into changing its migration policies. It later emerges children were not thrown overboard

2007 Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a critic of President Vladimir Putin, is shot dead at her apartment block in Moscow.

2018 Australian driver Craig Lowndes wins his seventh Bathurst 1000