ON THIS day
1461 Edward IV defeats Henry VI for the throne of England in Towton, the bloodiest battle of the York-Lancaster conflict known as the Wars of the Roses.
1867 With the British North America Act, the British colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Canada unite as Dominion of Canada.
1885 A NSW contingent arrives in Sudan, the first time Australian troops fight in an imperial war, to fight a Islamist forces under the Mahdi. The NSW contingent consists of an infantry battalion and an artillery battery, totalling 758 men. They leave Sydney on March 3 and return on June 19.
1901 NSW, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia begin voting for members of the first Australian parliament.
1912 While returning from the South Pole, England’s Captain Robert Falcon Scott, 43, writes his last diary entry before he and his two companions freeze to death in Antarctica.
1961 Stephen Bradley is found guilty of the kidnap and murder of Bondi schoolboy Graeme Thorne, 8. Shortly before the kidnapping, Thorne’s family had won the Sydney Opera House Lottery .
1971 US Army lieutenant William Calley, 27, is convicted by a New York court martial of murdering at least 22 Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre. He will be jailed for life.
1973 US troops evacuate Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) as the US ends its involvement in the Vietnam War. Communist forces free the last known 67 US POWs on the same day, in accordance with the Paris agreement. The US had suffered 45,948 combat deaths.
1987 US model Ginger Meadows (above), 24, is killed by a crocodile while swimming in Western Australia’s Prince Regent River.
1994 Allan Border ends his Test cricket career in Durban, South Africa, with a record tally of 11,174 runs.