Today in History

1707 - Union between England and Scotland goes into effect under name Great Britain.

1770 - Forby Sutherland is laid to rest at Botany Bay, the first European to be buried in NSW.

1889 - May 1 is chosen by socialist congress meeting in Paris as the date to demonstrate for the eight-hour day.

1937 - Spanish painter Pablo Picasso produces the first sketch of his masterpiece Guernica, five days after the Basque town is bombed by the Germans.

1967 - Elvis Presley marries Priscilla Beaulieu.

1979 - Greenland is granted home rule by

Denmark after referendum.

1986 - Millions of blacks stay away from jobs and schools in what is described as largest anti-apartheid protest in South Africa’s history.

1989 - Government of Kampuchea changes the country’s name to Cambodia.

1995 - The Croatian Army mounts a fullscale assault on the Serb-held enclave of Slavonia in Croatia, sending thousands of civilians fleeing.

1997 - Britain’s Labour Party, led by Tony Blair, wins a landslide victory in a general election.

1999 - The body of British mountaineer George Mallory is found on Mount Everest, almost 75 years after he disappeared. 2003 - UN international staff return to Baghdad for the first time since the US invasion.

2015 - The bodies of executed Australian drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran are driven from a Jakarta funeral home to the airport before being flown back to Sydney.

Birthdays

Calamity Jane, US frontierswoman (18521903); Rita Coolidge, US singer (1945-); John Woo, Chinese-born film director (1946-); Joanna Lumley, English actress (1946- ); Wes Anderson, US film director (1969-).