ON THIS DAY
42BC Battle of Philippi, second engagement; Brutus commits suicide.
1642 The first major conflict of the English Civil War takes place at the Battle of Edgehill between the Royalists under King Charles I and the Parliamentarians.
1739 Britain declares war on Spain. The conflict is called the War of Jenkins’ Ear, because of the alleged amputation of Captain Robert Jenkins’ ear by Spanish coastguards.
1789 Matthew Flinders, adventurous at 15, joins the Royal Navy as a lieutenant’s servant aboard HMS Alert.
1823 Surveyor-general John Oxley leaves Sydney on the cutter Mermaid to examine Port Bowen, Port Curtis (Gladstone) and Moreton Bay. He is to examine the suggestion of a convict colony at Port Curtis. He will also examine the Tweed River and Brisbane River.
1917 Vladimir Lenin arrives in Russia from Finland to urge his Bolshevik comrades to seize power.
1942 The British, led by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery (above), launch a successful infantry attack against the Germans, led by Rommel, at El-alamein, Egypt.
1944 US forces led by Admiral William F. Halsey Jr, start a decisive air and sea battle against the Japanese on the central Philippine island of Leyte. The Japanese lose 34 ships.
1950 Al Jolson, the US vaudeville singer who called himself ”the world’s greatest entertainer’’, dies aged 64 in San Francisco.
1968 The first heart transplant in Australia is performed at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, led by Harry Windsor, on Richard Pye, 57. He survives six weeks.
1975 All 11 people aboard a Heron aircraft die when it crashes into trees while approaching Cairns airport during an electrical storm.