ON THIS DAY
1877 The first men’s tennis singles competition at Wimbledon begins. Spencer Gore will win, defeating another British player.
1893 Black physician Daniel Hale Williams performs the world’s first successful closure of a heart wound in a Chicago hospital.
1894 Pianist Percy Grainger, 12, debuts in Melbourne.
1900 At Windsor Castle, Queen Victoria signs the royal commission of assent to establish the Commonwealth of Australia. It passes the new nation’s constitution into law.
1922 Johnny Weissmuller, 18, US swimmer of Romanian background and later Tarzan actor, becomes the first man to swim 100m in less than a minute, clocking 58.6 seconds in California.
1932 King Camp Gillette, US inventor and manufacturer of the safety razor, dies in Los Angeles.
1947 The announcement of the engagement of England’s Princess Elizabeth to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten.
1974 Frank Sinatra calls journalists hookers at a Melbourne concert, after his party assaults media crews, leading unions to ban his Australian tour.
1993 British scientists say that using DNA genetic fingerprinting tests, they have identified the bones of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II and members of his family.
1995 American band the Grateful Dead performs their last concert, at Soldier Field in Chicago. Lead guitarist and vocalist Jerry Garcia dies the following month.
2006 The Sunday Telegraph reveals that John Howard made a secret agreement 12 years earlier to hand the Liberal Party leadership to Peter Costello (pictured) after two terms.