Today in history
1758 - French forces advance against Madras in India.
1777 - Bavaria, on death of Maximillian III, passes to Charles Theodore, Elector of Palatine, igniting the War of the Bavarian Succession.
1803 - Sindhia of Gwalior submits to British in India.
1834 - Church Missionary Society printer William Colenso arrives in the Bay of Islands with New Zealand’s second printing press.
1835 - Charles Darwin leaves New Zealand after a nine-day visit.
1880 - Transvaal Boers under Stephanus Kruger declare a republic.
1886 - Germany and Portugal agree on boundaries between Angola and German Southwest Africa.
1903 - About 600 people die in the Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago.
1911 - Revolutionary Provisional Assembly in China elects Dr Sun Yatsen as the nation’s first president.
1922 - Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, consisting of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, joins the Soviet Union.
1949 - France transfers sovereignty to Vietnam.
1958 - French West African states decide to form a federation within the French community.
1962 - China warns that the ceasefire in border conflict with India is unstable.
1964 - UN Security Council calls for an end to all foreign intervention in the Congo, a cease-fire and withdrawal of mercenaries.
1972 - US halts its heavy bombing of North Vietnam.
1987 - New Zealand cricket team denied history victory against Australia at the MCG, Melbourne, by dodgy umpiring and a last-wicket stand.
1997 - China announces stronger restrictions on the use of the internet, aiming to curtail the use of email and the world wide web among dissidents.
1998 - The US Federal Trade Commission approves the $US53 billion merger of British Petroleum and Amoco.
1999 - A man walks into the office of Pakistan’s largest Urdu-language newspaper and confesses to killing 100 children.
2006 - Saddam Hussein, 69, the former dictator of Iraq who was driven from power by a Us-led war, is hanged.
2010 - Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav is convicted of rape.
2011 - Hundreds of Sunni Muslims gather in Baghdad to celebrate the withdrawal of American forces.
2014 - Indonesian search team find wreckage of Airasia Flight 8501, which disappeared on December 28
Today’s birthdays: Rudyard Kipling, English author (1865-1936); Bo Diddley, US singer/guitarist (1928-2008); Davy Jones, singer/actor of Monkees fame (1945-2012); Tiger Woods, US golfer (1975-).