ON THIS day
1453 Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire fall to the Ottomans, which some historians list as the end of the Middle Ages.
1500 Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Diaz, who discovered the Cape of Good Hope, drowns on a voyage.
1660 On his 30th birthday Charles II returns to London from exile in the Netherlands to claim the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth comes to an end.
1835 John Batman, pioneer settler of Melbourne, explores land along the Batman River. 1898
Greeks and Syrians begin building Australia’s first Greek Orthodox Church, at Bourke and Ridge St, Surry Hills.
1905 The Russian navy is defeated in the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War.
1942 American singer and actor Bing Crosby records the holiday classic White Christmas, which became one of the best-selling singles of all time.
1953 Following numerous failed attempts by others, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay (above) became the first climbers to surmount Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world (29,032 feet [8849 metres]).
1992 Entrepreneur Alan Bond is sentenced in Perth to 30 months jail for dishonesty over the rescue of Rothwells merchant bank. He is free after three months, acquitted on appeal.
1999 Discovery becomes the first space shuttle to dock with the International Space Station.
2012 A 5.9 magnitude earthquake kills 24 people near Bologna, northern Italy.
2017 Panamanian military leader Manuel Noriega, who ruled Panama (1983–89) until ousted by US forces and who later served prison sentences in the US and Panama, dies at age 83 in Panama City.