ON THIS DAY
1519 Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet of five ships sail from Seville to circumnavigate the globe.
1675 Construction of Greenwich Observatory begins in London on the imaginary line of 0 longitude. Charles II lays the foundation stone.
1792 A huge crowd storms the Tuileries palace of King Louis XVI in Paris to evict the French royal family, who are then jailed.
1815 The first Wesleyan minister in Australia, Reverend Samuel Leigh, arrives in Sydney on the ship Hebe from England to organise the Methodist Church in Australia.
1842 The British parliament bans boys aged under 10 and girls and women from coal mining.
1844 Explorer Charles Sturt leaves Adelaide in search of an inland sea. He will return two years later, having found neither a sea nor any tracts of arable land.
1897 A young researcher at German chemical firm Bayer, Felix Hoffman, first synthesises acetylsalicylic acid, aspirin’s active ingredient.
1920 The Princes Highway officially opens at Warragul in Gippsland, although sections are still better suited to bullock teams than motor cars.
1949 Immigration minister Arthur Calwell says people should call migrants New Australians instead of using names such as Balts.
1976 BodylineTest wicketkeeper Bert Oldfield dies at 81.
1977 Mass killer Son of Sam, aka David Berkowitz (above), 24, a postal worker, is arrested in Yonkers, New York.
2003 The Bulldogs’ Hazem El Masri, 27, equals an all-time rugby league premiership record of 30 consecutive goals on his way to becoming the game’s all-time pointscoring record holder.