Today in history
1419 – French city of Rouen surrenders to England’s Henry V in the Hundred Years War, completing his conquest of Normandy.
1649 – Trial of England’s King Charles I begins.
1790 – Second Fleet sails from England with 1006 convicts aboard for new settlement at Sydney Cove.
1795 – French forces overrun Holland.
1845 – Ma¯ori chief Hone Heke chops down the British flagstaff above Kororareka for the third time, in his continuing protest over European colonisation – his actions eventually leading to war in the Far North.
1859 – France and Sardinia sign treaty of alliance.
1899 – Britain and Egypt establish joint control over Sudan.
1900 – Bubonic plague spreads from Adelaide to Sydney – 103 were to die.
1945 – Soviet troops take Krakow, Poland, in World War II.
1956 – Sudan joins Arab League as ninth member.
1957 – GTV 9, later Channel Nine, begins transmission in Melbourne, Australia.
1960 – United States and Japan sign treaty of mutual security.
1966 – Sir Robert Menzies retires after more than 16 years as Australia’s prime minister.
1967 – Nineteen people are killed in the Strongman Mine explosion at Runanga, near Greymouth on the South Island’s West Coast. An inquiry finds safety regulations were not followed.
1975 – New Constitution takes effect in China.
1983 – South Africa resumes direct rule of Namibia after five years of semi-autonomy.
1990 – Mayor Marion Barry of Washington DC is arraigned on charges of crack cocaine possession.
1991 – Iraqi Scud missiles hit Tel Aviv, Israel, injuring at least 17 people.
1998 – Peru and Ecuador agree on a timetable for a peace treaty to formally end their 1995 border war.
1998 – Rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Carl Perkins, whose hit song Blue Suede Shoes helped lift Elvis Presley to stardom, dies aged 65.
2000 – Film star Hedy Lamarr, 86, is found dead in her Florida home.
2004 – The International Atomic Energy Agency agrees with the United States and Britain that it will oversee the dismantling of Libya’s atomic arms program.
2009 – Australian writer Harry Nicolaides, 41, is sentenced to three years in a Thai jail after pleading guilty to criminal charges of insulting the country’s royal family.
Today’s Birthdays:
James Watt, Scottish engineerinventor (1736-1819); Robert E Lee, confederate general in the US Civil War (1807-1870); Edgar Allen Poe, US writer (1809-1849); Erich Segal, US author, screenwriter and academic (1938-2010).