TODAY IN HISTORY

1498 Explorer Vasco da Gama arrives at Calicut, India, to complete his voyage around Africa.

1506 Explorer Christopher Columbus dies, aged about 54.

1784 The Netherlands yields to Britain some of its holdings in India and Indonesia in a treaty signed as a late part of the Peace of Paris, a collection of treaties that concludes the American Revolution.

1873 Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis are granted a patent for using copper rivets to strengthen certain areas of trousers, notably pocket corners. The patent was credited with giving rise to blue jeans.

1882 Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy secretly form the Triple Alliance, a treaty that provides mutual protection against attacks by other European powers until Italy enters World War I.

1886 Eliza Donnithorne, thought to be the model for Miss Havisham in the Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations, dies in Sydney. 1897

In the first Greco-Turkish war, the Greeks fighting for the annexation of Crete yield to pressures from European powers to withdraw their troops from Crete.

1908 Indonesian intellectuals found the Boedi Oetomo, or Budi Utomo, an educational group which grows into a nationalist movement against Dutch rule.

1989 Chinese prime minister Li Peng declares martial law in Beijing in an bid to stamp out protests by pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square.