Today in history
1540 - First recorded horse race meeting in England is held at Roodeye Fields, Chester.
1941 - German troops under General Erwin Rommel cross from Italy to North Africa in World War II.
1942 - The French passenger liner Normandie burns and sinks at its pier in New York City.
1943 - WWII battle for Guadalcanal ends in US victory over Japanese.
1950 - US Senator Joseph Mccarthy says he has evidence that there are individuals in the State Department who are card-carrying members of the Communist Party.
1962 - Jamaica becomes independent nation within British Commonwealth.
1964 - The Beatles make their first live American TV appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
1969 - First test flight of the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet.
1971 - Earthquake in San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles kills at least 64 people.
1972 - British government declares state of emergency over a miners’ strike.
1981 - Death of Bill Haley, US rock’n’roll singer and bandleader.
1990 - Kenyan Foreign Minister Robert Ouko is found slain at his family farm before he was to have presented a report on corruption.
1999 - The US Senate begins closed-door deliberations in President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial.
2001 - A US Navy submarine collides with a Japanese fishing boat off the Hawaiian coast, killing nine men and boys aboard the boat.
2002 - Death of Princess Margaret, 71, younger sister of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.
2005 - A car bomb blamed on Basque separatists explodes in Madrid, injuring dozens of people.
2007 - Australian kayaker Andrew Mcauley is lost at sea while attempting a trans-tasman crossing. His kayak capsizes 65 kilometres from New Zealand’s Milford Sound.
2008 - Turkey’s parliament votes to amend the constitution to lift a decades-old ban on Islamic head scarves at Turkey’s universities, despite fierce opposition.
2011 - British police disclose they will contact thousands of people whose mobile phones may have been targeted by the News Of The World tabloid, an indication of the scale of the scandal at the heart of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
Today’s Birthdays:
Charles Kingsford Smith, Australian aviation pioneer (1897-1935); Carole King, US singer (1942-); Joe Pesci, US actor (1943-); Derryn Hinch, Australian media personality (1944-); Mia Farrow, US actor (1945-); Gina Rinehart, Australian mining billionaire (1954-); Glenn Mcgrath, Australian cricketer (1970-).