ON THIS DAY
1415
The English, led by Henry V, score a big victory over the French at the Battle of Agincourt.
1586
Mary Queen of Scots is sentenced to death.
1616
Dutch mariner Dirk Hartog lands on Australia’s west coast. He leaves a pewter plate inscribed with details of his ship and crew
1794
Four of five “Scottish Martyrs’’, sentenced for sedition in Britain, arrive on the Surprize. Thomas Muir, Thomas Fyshe Palmer, William Skirving and Maurice Margarot promoted ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Muir escapes in 1796 to the US, Skirving dies that year in Sydney and Margarot returns to England in 1810.
1854
The British Light Brigade charges Russian cannons at Balaclava. The much-eulogised charge in the Crimean War is a mistake, killing hundreds of cavalrymen.
1911
Armoured cruiser HMAS Australia is launched in Glasgow by Lady Reid, wife of high commissioner George Reid, just three months after the RAN is founded.
1936
Italy and Germany establish the RomeBerlin Axis.
1955
The first domestic microwave ovens go on sale.
1966
An Australian Army interrogator holds a suspected spy’s nose and pours water down her throat at Nui Dat in the Vietnam War. The torture is covered up but admitted by prime minister John Gorton in March 1968.
1983
The US military, under President Ronald Reagan, invades the tiny island country of Grenada.
1984
Australian drugs tsar Robert Trimbole, 53, (above) is arrested in Dublin, under the name Michael Hanbury, on suspicion of possessing a firearm. Efforts to extradite him fail.
2004
Australia has its first military casualties in Iraq when three soldiers are wounded by a bomb.