ON THIS DAY
451
The Church council at Chalcedon, near Constantinople, adopts the Chalcedonian Creed affirming the dual nature of Jesus Christ as both human and divine.
1707 Four warships of the British naval fleet are wrecked on the Scilly Isles off Cornwall during bad weather. Around 1500 sailors are killed including Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell. The disaster was blamed partly on the inability of navigators to properly determine their longitude.
1773 The King of Tonga presents Captain James Cook with a turtle. It is later taken back to London, where it died in 1966.
1797 The first recorded parachute jump is made by Frenchman Andre Jacques Garnerin from a balloon 680m above the Parc Monceau in Paris.
1836 Politician and former general Sam Houston is inaugurated as the first president of the Republic of Texas.
1878 The world’s first rugby match under lights takes place in Salford, between Broughton and Swinton.
1906 Noted French Postimpressionist artist Paul Cezanne dies at the age of 67 in Aix-en-Provence.
1907 A run on the stocks of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, one of New York’s largest trusts, causes a financial panic that results in a depression.
1928 Andrew Fisher (above), three times prime minister of Australia, dies in West Hampstead in London at the age of 66.
1964 French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre rejects the Nobel prize for literature, saying it will have a negative impact on his writing 2013
ACT passes same-sex marriage laws. The Commonwealth immediately lodges a High Court objection, seeking an expedited hearing before the first marriages happen in early December. The legislation is later overturned by the High Court.