Today in history
1290 — Jews are exiled from England by proclamation of King Edward I.
1704 — Forces of Russia’s Tsar Peter the Great take Narva in Russia.
1887 — US inventor Thomas A Edison receives a patent for his Kinetoscope, a device which produces moving pictures.
1888 — Body of Mary Ann ‘‘Polly’’ Nichols, first victim of murderer ‘‘Jack the Ripper’’, is found in London.
1920 — First ever news program is broadcast by the radio station 8MK in Detroit, Michigan.
1923 — Italy occupies Corfu in Greece.
1950 — Contingent of 80 men from First Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, leaves for the Korean War.
1957 — Malaya becomes an independent member of the British Commonwealth.
1968 — West Indian Garfield Sobers becomes the first cricketer to score six sixes off one over in firstclass cricket, in England.1969 — Rocky Marciano, former world heavyweight boxing champion, is killed in an air crash in Iowa.
1973 — Death of John Ford, US film director.
1986 — Moscow’s secret police hold US correspondent Nicholas Daniloff on spying allegations.1987 — Government and opposition officials in South Korea agree on revising Constitution to clear way for direct presidential elections and other reforms.
1991 — Uzbekistan and Kirgyzstan become ninth and 10th Soviet republics to declare independence.
1997 — Princess Diana and her millionaire companion Dodi Al Fayed are killed in a Paris car crash.
2003 — Kenya lifts a ban on the Mau Mau movement, which spearheaded an uprising against British colonialists in the 1950s.
2006 — Police in Norway recover the Edvard Munch masterpieces The Scream and Madonna, two years after masked gunmen grabbed the national art treasures in front of stunned visitors at an Oslo museum.
2007 — The 25th Anniversary of Elk Cloner, regarded as the first virus to hit personal computers worldwide.
2012 — Kofi Annan’s time as a would-be peacemaker among Syria’s warring parties is over and he quietly leaves the role having failed to end the conflict in the Arab state. The task falls to another veteran UN diplomat, Lakhdar Brahimi.
2015 — Unions royal commissioner Dyson Heydon rules he will not step aside over his speaking engagement at a Liberal fundraiser. TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS Caligula (Gaius Caesar), Emperor of Rome (12-41); Theophile Gautier, French author (1811-1872); Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands (1880-1962) Richard Gere, US actor (1949-) Edwin Moses, American athlete (1955-)