ON THIS DAY
1381
A peasants’ revolt in England, led by Wat Tyler, starts with riots at Dartford, Kent.
1629
Dutch vessel Batavia is wrecked off the West Australian coast, on the Houtman Abrolhos islands. About 250 people survive but many are murdered by fellow survivors.
1647
England’s King Charles I is seized as hostage by the army.
1783
The Montgolfier brothers make their first public demonstration of a hot-air balloon, flying 10-minutes at Annonay, France.
1789
Convict actors perform the first play of colonial NSW, Restoration drama The Recruiting Officer, in a huttheatre at The Rocks.
1896
Henry Ford makes a successful predawn test run of his horseless carriage, called a quadricycle, through streets of Detroit.
1913
British suffragette Emily Davison, 40, runs in front of the King’s horse Anmer during the Epsom Derby and dies four days later.
1924
Radio company AWA’S (Amalgamated Wireless Australasia) managing director, Ernest Thomas Fisk, confirms that a human voice has been beamed from Guglielmo Marconi’s experimental station in England to his station in Vaucluse, Sydney.
1937
The world’s first shopping carts were introduced at Humpty Dumpty grocery stores in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
1940
The evacuation of more than 338,000 Allied soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk, with hundreds of civilian boats, is completed. 1984
Indian troops attack the Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar to flush out occupying Sikh militants. About 1200 people, including almost 500 civilians, die. Prime minister Indira Gandhi (pictured) is killed in reprisal by her Sikh bodyguards four months later.