Today in history

1520 — King Christian II of Denmark and Norway defeats Swedes at Lake Asunden and subsequently conquers Sweden.

1788 — HMS Supply, first ship of Britain’s First Fleet to Australia, reaches Botany Bay.

1913 — Greek and Turkish naval forces battle off Tendos Isle.

1915 — With the European powers preoccupied with World War I, Japan secretly presents China with Twentyone Demands for privileges.

1919 — The World War I Peace Congress opens in Versailles, France.

1936 — Author Rudyard Kipling dies in England.

1945 — Soviet troops relieve Leningrad after a 16-month German siege.

1952 — Anti-british riots break out in Egypt.

1968 — United States and Soviet Union agree on draft treaty to control nuclear weapons.

1974 — Egypt and Israel sign an agreement to disengage their forces along the Suez Canal.

1976 — France expels at least 40 Soviet officials on grounds they have worked as spies.

1977 — Australia’s worst rail crash, at Granville, Sydney, kills 83 when a train hits a concrete bridge.

1996 — Lisa Marie Presley-jackson files for divorce from Michael Jackson.

1999 — Brazil lets its currency float freely, opting to use austerity measures to keep spending in check.

2000 — Helmut Kohl resigns as honorary chairman of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, brought down by a campaign financing scandal.

2002 — The Sierra Leone government declares that the country’s 11-year-old civil war, which killed about 50,000 people — mostly civilians — over.

2003 — Four people die and almost 500 homes are destroyed when bushfire takes thousands of Canberrans by surprise.

2005 — Airbus launches the A380, hailed as the largest civil airliner ever built, capable of carrying up to 800 passengers.

2007 — A woman who disappeared in the jungles of northeastern Cambodia as a child is found 19 years later.

2009 — Barack Obama tells hundreds of thousands of supporters at a pre- inauguration rally that ‘‘anything is possible in America’’.

2012 — Italians tally 11 dead, 21 missing from the Costa Concordia cruise ship disaster.

2014 — Egypt’s election council claims that 98.1 per cent of voters supported the new military-backed constitution with a 38.6 turnout.

Today’s Birthdays: Alan Alexander Milne, Winnie-the-pooh author (1882-1956); Paul Keating, former Australian prime minister (1944-).