Today in history
1597 - Austria’s Archduke Albert captures Amiens in France.
1702 - First English daily newspaper to meet with some success, The Daily Courant, launched near London’s Fleet Street.
1812 - King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia declares Jews citizens with equal rights.
1818 - Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is published.
1845 - Maori rise up against British rule in New Zealand with an attack on Kororareka. The settlement had declined since the capital was moved from nearby Okiato to Auckland in 1841, but it was the fifth largest town in New Zealand.
1917 - British forces capture Baghdad during World War I.
1938 - German forces enter Austria.
1945 - The huge Krupps munitions works in Germany is destroyed when 1000 Allied bombers take part in the biggest daylight air raid in history.
1955 - Death of Sir Alexander Fleming, Scottish bacteriologist and Nobel prize winner who – with the help of Australia’s Howard Florey – discovered penicillin in 1928.
1960 - US launches Pioneer V into orbit around the sun from Cape Canaveral.
1989 - Two dozen nations sign declaration in the Netherlands enlisting United Nations as watchdog against pollution of earth’s atmosphere.
1990 - General Augusto Pinochet steps down as Chile’s president and is succeeded by Patricio Aylwin.
2000 - A methane gas explosion rips through a coal mine in eastern Ukraine, killing 81 workers.
2004 - A series of bombs hidden in backpacks explode in quick succession, blowing apart four commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, killing some 199 people and wounding more than 1400 in the worst terrorist attack in Spanish history. A shadowy group claims responsibility in the name of alqaeda.
2006 - Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, on trial at The Hague for war crimes, is found dead in his prison cell.
2011 - A major earthquake off the main Japanese island of Honshu causes widespread damage and triggers a tsunami that kills up to 20,000 people, and devastates the city of Sendai and the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
2012 - A US Army sergeant opens fire on Afghan villagers as they sleep, killing 16 people – mostly women and children.
Today’s Birthdays: Torquato Tasso, Italian poet (1544-1595); Louis Florence d’epinay, French author (1726-1783); Rupert Murdoch, Australian-born media magnate (1931-); Douglas Adams, British writer (1952-2001); Alex Kingston, British actress (1963-).