ON THIS DAY
1477 William Caxton, a pioneering English printer, publishes Dictes And Sayenges Of The Phylosophers, the first dated book printed in England.
1840 Eden, the last convict transport to unload felons in Sydney, arrives with 267 male convicts.
1911 Parramatta dentist William Hart, 26, flies from Penrith to Sydney’s Agricultural Showground, at Moore Park, in what is then Australia’s longest flight.
1916 In World War I, British general Douglas Haig calls off the first Battle of the Somme after five months of futile fighting that brought a total of more than 1.2 million casualties to both sides.
1926 The Imperial Conference in London produces a report that states Britain and the Dominions are equal in status. The declaration is signed by British elder statesman Arthur Balfour, the chairman of a committee set up by the conference.
1928 Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse (above) debuts at the Colony Theatre in New York in a sound film called Steamboat Willie.
1952 The two-airlines policy takes effect, after the federal government agrees to keep the privatelyowned ANA in competition with its own TAA for 15 years.
1978 A total of 913 People’s Temple cult members commit suicide and a US congressman and four others are shot dead at Jonestown, Guyana.
2005 Actor Russell Crowe, 41, pleads guilty in New York to thirddegree assault for throwing a phone at a hotel concierge in June. He is later fined $US160 and given a conditional release. 2011 A fire roars through a nursing home at Quakers Hill, Sydney, fatally injuring 14 patients.
2015 New Zealand rugby union football player Jonah Lomu dies of a heart attack, aged 40 after a long battle with kidney disease.