ON THIS day
1702
Edward Mallet launches England’s first regular daily newspaper, the single-sheet Daily Courant, from his rooms above the White Hart hotel on Fleet St, London. 1806
Napoleon Bonaparte orders Matthew Flinders’ release after six years’ detention in Mauritius. The navigator had stopped on his way from Australia to England, not knowing war had resumed with France.
1845
Maori launch a new stage in their wars against British rule in New Zealand, sacking Kororareka garrison.
1871
Overland Telegraph Line surveyor William Mills writes that he has named a riverbed with several springs and water holes “Alice Springs’’ after superintendent Charles Todd’s wife.
1938
Adolf Hitler leads German troops on their invasion of Austria. 1942
US general Douglas MacArthur and his family leave the Philippines during the Japanese advance in World War II by PT boat, bound for Australia as Allied commander in the southwest Pacific.
1945
The huge Krupps munitions works at Essen in Germany is destroyed when 1000 Allied bombers take part in the biggest ever daylight air raid.
1995
Melinda Gainsford (above), 22, from Narromine, NSW, wins the 200m world indoor sprint title in Barcelona, clocking 22.64 seconds.
2004
Bombs kill 191 people at three Madrid railway stations and injure more than 2000. Spain’s government blames Basque separatists but Islamists are later implicated.
2006
Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, on trial at The Hague for war crimes, is found dead in his prison cell.
2011
A huge Japanese earthquake and the tsunamis it creates kills about 2000 people and damages nuclear reactors at Fukushima.