TODAY IN HISTORY

1521

Spaniard Hernan Cortez takes Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) from the Aztecs.

1806

Captain William Bligh becomes governor of NSW, replacing Philip Gidley King.

1844

Ludwig Leichhardt, 30, and party leave Sydney in the Sovereign for Moreton Bay to begin an overland expedition to the far north. They return to Sydney in March 1846.

1940

A Lockheed Hudson plane crashes near Canberra, killing all 10 on board including three federal ministers and the chief of the general staff.

1941

Federal cabinet decides to form the Australian Women’s Army Service.

1961

Berlin residents wake to find a barbed-wire border between the city’s communist east and democratic west.

1989

Thirteen people in a hot-air balloon die after it collides with another balloon, rips open and plunges to the ground near Alice Springs.

1995

Australian golfer Steve Elkington, 32, wins the US PGA championship, coming from behind to defeat Colin Montgomerie at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles.

2008

US swimmer Michael Phelps, 23, sets the record for most Olympic gold medals as he claims his 11th trophy.

2016

English actor and musician Kenny Baker, best known as the man inside the droid R2D2 in the

Star Wars films, dies at the age of 81.

2019

A man runs amok through Sydney’s CBD with a knife, killing one woman and injuring another before he is pinned to the ground by people using a chair and a milk crate. He is later arrested.