ON THIS DAY

1555 Protestant martyrs Bishop Hugh Latimer and Bishop Nicholas Ridley burn at the stake for heresy, victims of Queen Mary.

1846 William Thomas Green Morton first demonstrates the use of ether as a general anaesthetic before physicians at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

1885 The British clipper Cutty Sark sets sail from Sydney to reach the English Channel in a record 72 days, beating the time of the clipper Thermopylae.

1934 The Chinese communists began the Long March, the 10,000km trek that moves their revolutionary base from southeast China to northwest China.

1964 China conducts its first test of an atomic bomb, exploding it in the western region of Xinjiang.

1968 Australian athlete Peter Norman supports US rivals who give a black-power salute as they are awarded gold and bronze at the Olympic Games in Mexico City.

1974 Prince Charles and prime minister Gough Whitlam open the Anglo-australian Telescope, Australia’s largest, at Siding Spring Observatory.

1975 Five Australianbased newsmen are killed as Indonesian forces invading East Timor attack the town of Balibo.

1978 Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla is elected pope, the first nonItalian pope since 1522. He takes the name John Paul II.

1996 Fans at a soccer stadium in Guatemala City stampede at a World Cup qualifying match, killing more than 80.

2018 Anna Burns’ book Milkman wins the Man Booker Prize. She is the first winner from Northern Ireland.