TODAY IN HISTORY

476 Flavius Orestes, father of and the real power behind Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman emperor, is captured and executed by a German warrior. His son is later deposed

1830 Inventor Peter Cooper’s steam locomotive, Tom Thumb, loses a race to a horse-drawn railway coach in Baltimore in the US

1833 The Slavery Abolition Act, abolishing the institution through most of the British Empire, obtains royal assent in London

1914 The first major engagement of the British and German navies in World War I occurs at the Battle of Heligoland Bight. The Germans losing four ships and 1000 sailors and the British 33 sailors

1923 building of the (first) Parliament House in Canberra begins

1941 Menzies announces that he will quit as PM the next day

1947 Legendary bullfighter Manolete is fatally wounded by a bull during a fight in Linares, Spain

1963 Some 200,000 people march on Washington, D.C., in a high point of the civil rights movement, remembered for the I Have a Dream speech of Martin Luther King, Jr

1996 The marriage of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales, ends after 15 years with the granting of a decree absolute