ON THIS DAY
1581 Edmund Campion and other Jesuit martyrs are hanged at Tyburn.
1640 Portuguese nationalists revolt against Spanish control. Portugal becomes independent under a duke who is crowned John IV.
1761 Marie Tussaud, the founder of Madame Tussaud’s museum of wax figures, is born in France.
1899 The world’s first Labor government, led by Anderson Dawson, takes power in Queensland. The minority regime will last less than a week.
1913 The world’s first moving assembly line debuts, used in manufacturing Model Ts at a Ford factory in Michigan; the innovation was the idea of owner Henry Ford, and it revolutionised the auto industry.
1925 The Locarno Pact is signed in London in an attempt to keep Europe peaceful.
1926 A federal levy on imported petrol is imposed for the first time. A tax on locally refined petrol is introduced the following year. The Commonwealth Oil Refineries at Laverton, Victoria, and the Shell company’s works at Clyde, NSW, began refining petrol in 1924.
1942 The HMAS Armidale is sunk by a Japanese air attack in the Arafura Sea. Of the Allied men on board, 100 die and 46 survive.
1955 Rosa Parks (pictured) refuses to relinquish her bus seat and is arrested in Alabama.
1959 The Antarctic Treaty is signed by 12 countries, making the Antarctic continent a demilitarised zone to be preserved for scientific research.
1968 For the first time Aboriginal workers on NT pastoral stations earn full wages. The award wage will extend to all indigenous employees.
2009 Liberal federal MPs elect Tony Abbott as their leader, deposing Malcolm Turnbull.