ON THIS DAY
1707 While returning from the unsuccessful siege of Toulon, a fleet of 21 English warships, unable to properly determine their longitude, run into the Scilly Isles. More than 1500 sailors are drowned, including Admiral Cloudesley Shovell, who was said to have been murdered by a local woman who stole his ring.
1797 Army inspector Andre Jacques Garnerin makes the first parachute descent, jumping from a balloon 1000m above Paris. The parachute is made of canvas 7m in diameter.
1860 Thomas Pattison, a deaf migrant from Scotland, opens the Deaf And Dumb Institution at Liverpool St, Sydney, offering private lessons to children.
1917 The trans-Australian railway opens, with the first train leaving Port Augusta in SA for Kalgoorlie in WA.
1938 Inventor Chester Carlson gives the first public demonstration of photocopying in New York City. Some 20 companies reject his product before a non-profit firm agrees to back his idea for Xerox.
1962 The Cuban missile crisis grows as US president John F Kennedy declares a naval “quarantine” of Cuba after the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
1966 KGB master spy George Blake (above), 44, escapes from a London maximum security prison, Wormwood Scrubs, by sawing bars and flees to the Soviet Union. He was serving 42 years for spying.
2006 Ex-Democrats leader Natasha Stott Despoja announces she’ll quit federal politics when her term ends.
2013 The parliament of the Australian Capital Territory passes the Marriage Equality (Same Sex) Act, the first Australian parliament to legalise same sex marriages. It is overruled by the High Court.