ON THIS DAY

1844: Charles Sturt leaves Adelaide but returns two years later without having found in his search an inland sea or arable land.

1903: New Zealand wins first rugby union test against Australia, 22-3.

1907: Members of Australia’s federal parliament vote themselves their first pay rise, of 50 per cent.

1961: East German workers begin to build the Berlin Wall.

1995: Fifty years after World War II ended in the Pacific, Japan makes its first clear-cut apology for the country’s war-time actions.

1998: A car bomb blast in Omagh, Northern Ireland, kills 29 people in the worst single attack in nearly 30 years of violence.

Birthdays: Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor (1769-1821); Waleed Aly, Australian writer, academic and TV presenter (1978-).