ON THIS day

1543 Nicolaus Copernicus dies, just after the printing of his book on the revolution of heavenly bodies.

1689 The Toleration Act is passed by the British Parliament, granting freedom of worship to Non-conformists and allowing them their own places of worship and their own teachers and preachers. Freedom is not given to Catholics or Unitarians.

1830 The first line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad opens with the maiden voyage of Peter Cooper’s locomotive Tom Thumb.

1838 The first David Jones store opens, at George and Barrack streets, Sydney.

1844 Samuel Morse transmits the message, “What hath God wrought!’’ from Washington DC to Baltimore as he formally opens America’s first telegraph line.

1888 Australian soprano Nellie Melba makes her Covent Garden debut, in a London production of Lucia Di Lammermoor.

1917 Australian boxer and folk hero Les Darcy (above) dies at 21 of pneumonia, in exile in the US because he wanted to delay enlisting in the army.

1941 American singersongwriter Bob Dylan, hailed as the Shakespeare of his generation, is born in Duluth, Minnesota.

1987 Tess Debrincat, five, is shot dead inside her Quakers Hill home by two shotgun pellets intended to scare her family. Glen Thomas Bessant is later sentenced to life in jail.

2000 Israel ends its 18year occupation of southern Lebanon, withdrawing the last of its troops from its self-declared security zone. 2008 Scuba divers Richard Neely, 38, from Britain, and his American partner Alison Dalton, 40, are rescued after spending almost 19 hours floating in sharkinfested waters off the Whitsundays. They had been part of a dive group, but were mistakenly left behind.