TODAY IN HISTORY

1307 Scots king Robert the Bruce heavily defeats an English cavalry force at the battle of Loudoun Hill, Ayrshire.

1857 The Indian Mutiny erupts at Meerut when soldiers rescue comrades jailed for refusing to use new rifle cartridges, reputedly greased by pig and cow fat.

1865 Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, is captured by Union troops near Irwinville, Georgia.

1899 The first wireless telegraph message in Australia is transmitted, by Overland Telegraph builder Charles Todd and his son-inlaw, physicist William Bragg, over 550m in Adelaide. 1900

The iron-hulled sailing cargo ship Sierra Nevada sinks the morning after running aground at Portsea, Victoria; 23 drown out of a crew of 28.

1933 Nazi youth groups gather on a square in Berlin to burn books by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Bertolt Brecht, Albert Einstein and other authors who have been branded “un-German’’.

1954 Decca Records releases Rock Around The Clock, recorded by Bill Haley (pictured) and the Comets. It will top the US c h art .

1978 Princess Margaret of Britain and the Earl of Snowdon announce they will divorce after 18 years of marriage.

1996 The federal and state governments strike a historic agreement to introduce strict gun laws in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre.

2000 The flame for the torch of Sydney’s Olympic Games is lit at ruins of the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece.