ON THIS DAY
1531 Protestant troops under Jörg Göldli are defeated by Roman Catholic troops at the Battle of Kappel during the Swiss Reformation.
1776 Brigadier-General Benedict Arnold with 15 gunboats tries to block the British from New York at the battle of Valcour Island. The British pursue Arnold over two days, after which practically all Arnold’s ships are destroyed.
1855 Mary Ann Brownlow, 23, is hanged at Goulburn Jail for fatally stabbing her husband George at their Sutton village home near Canberra.
1892 James Mahoney, working in a backyard in Sydney, finds the bodies of two babies blocking a drain. John Makin later hangs for the murder of 12 babies; his wife Sarah serves 19 years in jail for her part.
1899 Boer War starts when the Boers of the two Dutch South African republics, led by Paul Kruger, declare war on the British.
1935 Dad and Dave author Steele Rudd (Arthur Davis), 66, dies in Brisbane.
1939 US president Franklin Roosevelt gets a letter from physicist Albert Einstein warning that building an atomic bomb may be possible.
1947 The first Indian cricket team to tour Australia arrive in Perth. They play WA from October 17. The four-day match ends in a draw.
1971 British musician John Lennon (above) releases the single Imagine, an iconic song of hope and peace. It is arguably the best-known work of his solo career.
1982 The wreck of Henry VIII’s flagship, the Mary Rose, is raised from the seabed off Portsmouth. 2002 the US Congress passes a bill, by a wide margin, granting President George W. Bush broad authority to use force against Iraq.
2004 Keith Ross Miller, considered by many to have been Australia’s greatest cricket all-rounder, dies in Victoria at the age of 84.