ON THIS day

1746 British forces defeat Jacobite Scots at the Battle of Culloden, near Inverness, Scotland. The Scots lose more than 1000 men.

1838 The Pastry War begins when French warships blockade the Mexican port of Veracruz. France had wanted compensation when a French pastry cook claimed soldiers near Mexico City damaged his restaurant.

1912 American Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel.

1917 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returns to Russia from Switzerland after 17 years in exile to urge fellow communists in Petrograd to seize power.

1922 The Treaty of Rapallo is signed between Germany and the Soviet Union, leading to co-operation between the diplomatic outcast countries and waiving of claims against each other from World War I.

1928 Australian explorer George Hubert Wilkins and US co-pilot Carl Ben Eielson fly over the Arctic ice cap from Alaska to Europe.

1948 The Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (later the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) is formed when 16 European countries sign a treaty.

1962 Champion Australian runner Herb Elliott, 23, says he is quitting international athletics to concentrate on natural sciences studies at Cambridge University. Elliott and his wife Anne are expecting their third child.

1964 Ronald Biggs and 11 other men who robbed the Glasgow-to-London night mail train are sentenced to a total of 307 years jail, from 25 to 30 years each. The event becomes known as the Great Train Roberry.

1986 Melbourne: James Federick Bazley, 60, is jailed for life for the murders of Mr Asia drug couriers Isobel and Douglas Wilson. He is also convicted of conspiring to murder Donald Mackay in 1977.