TODAY IN HISTORY

1520 Ferdinand Magellan and three Spanish ships enter the strait later named for him, sailing between the mainland tip of South America and the island of Tierra del Fuego toward the Pacific Ocean

1805 England’s Lord Nelson defeats the Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar but is mortally wounded

1818 Bushranger Michael Howe, 31, multiple murderer who loved flowers, is cornered and clubbed to death by a soldier and a convict in Tasmania

1934 Charles Kingsford Smith and P.G. Taylor leave Brisbane in the Lady Southern Cross on the first west-east crossing of the Pacific.

1966 A total of 144 people die, including 116 children, when a coal slag heap slips in the Welsh mining town of Aberfan, crushing a school and cottages

1972 Sir Paul Hasluck officially opens the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme

1978 A Cessna 182 piloted by Frederick Valentich, 20, disappears over Bass Strait after he reports having seen an unidentified flying object

2002 A student armed with four handguns walks into an economics tutorial room at Melbourne’s Monash University and opens fire, killing two students instantly and injuring five.

2008 The first flight of an Airbus A380 by Qantas touches down in Los Angeles. John Travolta and Olivia Newton John play cabin crew

2019 Several major daily newspapers across Australia, including The Daily Telegraph, carry front pages with blacked out stories, protesting government restrictions on reporting.