ON THIS DAY
1556
Thirteen-year-old Mogul leader Akbar’s (Bayram Khan) troops defeat Afghan general Hemu at the second battle of Panipat, in northwest India. The Hindu Hemu is beheaded and Mughal power is restored in India.
1888
Fire destroys a block of more than 60 business premises in Broken Hill’s main thoroughfare.
1914
France and Britain declare war on Turkey, widening World War I.
1919
Screen lover Rudolph Valentino marries lesbian actor Jean Acker. He is locked out of the bedroom on their wedding night.
1940
Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected to a third term as president of the United States.
1940
HMS Jervis Bay is sunk in the Atlantic Ocean, losing 190 crew, after it attacks a German warship, in a suicidal attempt to protect 37 merchant ships.
1956
Prime Minister Robert Menzies opens ABC television as the first broadcast is made from Sydney studios. The PM is keen despite glitches. The first show broadcast is The Twelve Pound Look (pictured).
1964
Cabinet decides to reintroduce compulsory military service, which had ended in 1960. The National Service Act enables the government to conscript men for a two-year term with a further three years in the Reserves. Marbles denoting birth dates are drawn from a lottery barrel to select conscripts, which total 63,000 between 1965 and 1972.
1970
La Balsa raft, with a four-man crew, reaches Mooloolaba, Queensland, from Ecuador after five months at sea. The sailors seek to prove ancient man could have crossed the Pacific.
2006
Former Iraq leader Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death by hanging for the 1982 Dujail massacre.
2013
India launches its first interplanetary spacecraft, the Mars Orbiter Mission, which is unmanned.