ON THIS day
337
Constantine the Great, the first Roman emperor to believe in and practise Christianity, is baptised on his deathbed in modern-day Turkey.
1455
Opening battle in England’s 30-year War of the Roses takes place at St Albans, as Lancastrians defeated the Yorkists.
1840
Britain orders an end to transportation to NSW after penal reformers and colonists clamour for an end to the convict system.
1849
Future US president Abraham Lincoln is granted a patent for a boat-lifting device. He remains the only US president to have a patent.
1923
Master brewer Edmund Resch (above) dies at 75 at his Darling Point mansion, Swifts. Despite his skill and generosity, the German-born Resch was interned as an enemy alien during WWI.
1939
German dictator Adolf Hitler and his Italian counterpart, Benito Mussolini, make a military and political alliance, the Pact of Steel.
1960
One of the largest earthquakes on record strikes the southern coast of Chile, killing about 5700 people and creating seismic sea waves that cause death and destruction in distant Pacific coastal areas, notably Japan and Hawaii.
1972
Richard Nixon arrives in Moscow, the first visit by a US president to the Soviet Union.
1981
Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe is convicted of 13 counts of murder and sentenced to life.
1998
In Ireland, Protestants and Catholics approve overwhelmingly a peace accord including self-rule for the North, in a referendum in the North and the Republic.
2008
Police raid the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in Paddington hours before the opening of an exhibition including pictures of naked children by photographer Bill Henson.