ON THIS DAY
432BC The Parthenon is consecrated in Athens to the goddess Athena.
1074 A synod begins in Rome at which Pope Gregory VII decrees that the marriage of Catholic priests must be stamped out. 1796
Future French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte marries Josephine de Beauharnais, widow of a former French officer executed during the revolution.
1862 The Battle of the Merrimack and Monitor, a duel between ironclads during the American Civil War, marks the beginning of a new era of naval warfare.
1870 Granny Smith dies at Ryde. Maria Ann Smith (above) gave her name to a tart green apple propagated on her property in Sydney’s northwest.
1916 Pancho Villa’s men kill more than a dozen in a raid on Columbus, New Mexico. This provokes the US to make a punitive expedition to Mexico.
1945 The US starts bombing Tokyo with napalm, causing fires that destroy a quarter of the city and kill 80,000 civilians.
1959 The Barbie doll makes her debut in a display at the American Toy Fair in New York City.
1979 The Arbitration Commission grants unpaid maternity leave of up to 12 months to women with a year’s unbroken work service.
1991 The Yugoslav army enters Belgrade with tanks as rebels protest against Slobodan Milosevic’s rule.
2000 Alan Bond, 61, walks free from Karnet prison farm near Perth after serving four years for fraud.
2009 The US sharemarket bottoms on the Dow-Jones index, marking the start of recovery from the global financial crisis.
2011 Discovery ends its career as the world’s most flown spaceship, returning from orbit to Cape Canaveral for the last time.