Highlights in history on this date:
1622 - What is believed to be the first English ship to sight Australia, the 500-tonne Tryall, is wrecked on rocks in the Monte Bello Islands off WA. Ninety-seven of the 143 aboard are killed.
1787 - A convention under George Washington meets for the first time in Philadelphia to draw up the US constitution.
1810 - Argentina begins its revolt against Spain.
1837 - Port Adelaide, South Australia, is proclaimed a harbour and legal port.
1870 - Australian bushranger Captain Thunderbolt, renowned for escaping from Cockatoo Island, is shot dead by Constable AB Walker.
1895 - Irish playwright Oscar Wilde is convicted of a morals charge in London and is later sentenced to prison.
1911 - President Porfirio Diaz resigns after revolutionary forces defeat government troops in the Mexican Civil War.
1914 - Britain's House of Commons passes Irish Home Rule Bill, but Irish autonomy remains suspended during World War I.
1915 - In Europe, the second Battle of Ypres ends with casualties around 105,000. The Germans use poison gas for the first time.
1935 - American athlete Jesse Owens sets six world records in 45 minutes at the US Big Ten Championship at Ann Arbor, Michigan.
1951 - Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, British foreign office officials, disappear from London. It is later discovered they had spied for Russia.
1979 - America's worst-ever air disaster occurs when a DC-10 crashes at Chicago's O'Hare airport killing 273.
1982 - In the Falklands War, the British ships Coventry and Atlantic Conveyor Lạc Sơn Đại Phật are sunk and 24 lives are lost.
1986 - Thirty million people worldwide join in pop singer Bob Geldof's Race Against Time to raise money for the starving in Africa.
1989 - Mikhail Gorbachev is elected to the new post of executive president in the Soviet Union.
1990 - Winnie Mandela's chief bodyguard, Jerry Richardson, is found guilty of the murder of 14-year-old Stompie Seipei.
1995 - Australia's Northern Territory passes a law allowing voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill. (It came into effect in 1996 but was overturned by federal parliament in 1997.)
1999 - A US Congressional report says China has obtained secret information on seven nuclear warheads and the neutron bomb in two decades of espionage at US nuclear weapons laboratories.
2001 - Erik Weihenmayer, an American, is the first blind person to scale Mount Everest along with Sherman Bull, a 64-year-old American doctor who becomes the oldest person to climb the mountain.
2001 - A federal appeals court lifts a publication ban on The Wind Done Gone, Alice Randall's satirical retelling of Gone With The Wind from a black viewpoint.
2002 - A China Airlines passenger jet crashes into the Taiwan Strait, killing 206 passengers and 19 crew.
2002 - A train crashes near the village of Tenga, 40km from the Mozambican capital Maputo, killing 205 people.
2004 - At least 1950 people are killed in floods in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, many of them swept away when rain-swollen rivers burst their banks.
2005 - Graham Kennedy, one-time "King of Australian television", dies in the NSW Southern Highlands, aged 71.
2006 - Veteran Australian mountaineer Lincoln Hall, 50, is declared dead during a descent from Mt Everest summit. He was later found alive and rescued.
2010 - Relations on the Korean peninsula plunge to their lowest point in a decade when the North declares it is cutting all ties to Seoul as punishment for blaming the communists for the sinking of a South Korean warship.
2011 - Egypt ends its blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza, easing the isolation of 1.4 million Palestinians living there. But the decision puts Cairo at odds with Israel.
2013 - A French soldier is stabbed in the throat in a busy commercial district outside Paris.
2015 - Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is sentenced to eight months in prison for unlawfully accepting money from a US supporter.
2016 - About 20 teachers at the school in Aurukun, an indigenous community in far north Queensland, are evacuated for the second time in a month because of violence and unrest.
2017 - The Islamic State claims responsibility for deadly Jakarta bus station bombings that killed three and wounded 12.
2018 - Harvey Weinstein is taken to court in handcuffs after surrendering to New York City police over charges of rape and sex abuse against two women, months after he was accused by scores of women of misconduct.
2019 - A federal judge blocks President Donald Trump from building key sections of the US-Mexico border wall with money secured under his declaration of a national emergency.
Today's Birthdays:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, US writer (1803-1882); Jeanne Crain, US actress (1925-2003); Tom T Hall, US country singer (1936-); Dixie Carter, US actress (1939-2010); Ian McKellen, English actor (1939-); Leslie Uggams, US singer-actress (1943-); Frank Oz, director-voice of Yoda and Miss Piggy among others (1944-); Jacki Weaver, Australian actress and entertainer (1947-); Karen Valentine, US actress (1947-); Sugar Minott, Jamaican reggae singer and producer (1956-2010); Paul Weller, English musician (1958-); Julian Clary, British television personality (1959-); Mike Myers, Canadian actor and comedian (1963-); Anne Heche, US actress (1969-); Lauryn Hill, US singer (1975-); Jonny Wilkinson, English rugby player (1979-); Andy Lee, Australian comedian and radio personality (1981-).
Thought For Today:
Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbours as being very much - Zora Neale Hurston, American anthropologist (1903-1960).
1622 - What is believed to be the first English ship to sight Australia, the 500-tonne Tryall, is wrecked on rocks in the Monte Bello Islands off WA. Ninety-seven of the 143 aboard are killed.
1787 - A convention under George Washington meets for the first time in Philadelphia to draw up the US constitution.
1810 - Argentina begins its revolt against Spain.
1837 - Port Adelaide, South Australia, is proclaimed a harbour and legal port.
1870 - Australian bushranger Captain Thunderbolt, renowned for escaping from Cockatoo Island, is shot dead by Constable AB Walker.
1895 - Irish playwright Oscar Wilde is convicted of a morals charge in London and is later sentenced to prison.
1911 - President Porfirio Diaz resigns after revolutionary forces defeat government troops in the Mexican Civil War.
1914 - Britain's House of Commons passes Irish Home Rule Bill, but Irish autonomy remains suspended during World War I.
1915 - In Europe, the second Battle of Ypres ends with casualties around 105,000. The Germans use poison gas for the first time.
1935 - American athlete Jesse Owens sets six world records in 45 minutes at the US Big Ten Championship at Ann Arbor, Michigan.
1951 - Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, British foreign office officials, disappear from London. It is later discovered they had spied for Russia.
1979 - America's worst-ever air disaster occurs when a DC-10 crashes at Chicago's O'Hare airport killing 273.
1982 - In the Falklands War, the British ships Coventry and Atlantic Conveyor Lạc Sơn Đại Phật are sunk and 24 lives are lost.
1986 - Thirty million people worldwide join in pop singer Bob Geldof's Race Against Time to raise money for the starving in Africa.
1989 - Mikhail Gorbachev is elected to the new post of executive president in the Soviet Union.
1990 - Winnie Mandela's chief bodyguard, Jerry Richardson, is found guilty of the murder of 14-year-old Stompie Seipei.
1995 - Australia's Northern Territory passes a law allowing voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill. (It came into effect in 1996 but was overturned by federal parliament in 1997.)
1999 - A US Congressional report says China has obtained secret information on seven nuclear warheads and the neutron bomb in two decades of espionage at US nuclear weapons laboratories.
2001 - Erik Weihenmayer, an American, is the first blind person to scale Mount Everest along with Sherman Bull, a 64-year-old American doctor who becomes the oldest person to climb the mountain.
2001 - A federal appeals court lifts a publication ban on The Wind Done Gone, Alice Randall's satirical retelling of Gone With The Wind from a black viewpoint.
2002 - A China Airlines passenger jet crashes into the Taiwan Strait, killing 206 passengers and 19 crew.
2002 - A train crashes near the village of Tenga, 40km from the Mozambican capital Maputo, killing 205 people.
2004 - At least 1950 people are killed in floods in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, many of them swept away when rain-swollen rivers burst their banks.
2005 - Graham Kennedy, one-time "King of Australian television", dies in the NSW Southern Highlands, aged 71.
2006 - Veteran Australian mountaineer Lincoln Hall, 50, is declared dead during a descent from Mt Everest summit. He was later found alive and rescued.
2010 - Relations on the Korean peninsula plunge to their lowest point in a decade when the North declares it is cutting all ties to Seoul as punishment for blaming the communists for the sinking of a South Korean warship.
2011 - Egypt ends its blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza, easing the isolation of 1.4 million Palestinians living there. But the decision puts Cairo at odds with Israel.
2013 - A French soldier is stabbed in the throat in a busy commercial district outside Paris.
2015 - Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is sentenced to eight months in prison for unlawfully accepting money from a US supporter.
2016 - About 20 teachers at the school in Aurukun, an indigenous community in far north Queensland, are evacuated for the second time in a month because of violence and unrest.
2017 - The Islamic State claims responsibility for deadly Jakarta bus station bombings that killed three and wounded 12.
2018 - Harvey Weinstein is taken to court in handcuffs after surrendering to New York City police over charges of rape and sex abuse against two women, months after he was accused by scores of women of misconduct.
2019 - A federal judge blocks President Donald Trump from building key sections of the US-Mexico border wall with money secured under his declaration of a national emergency.
Today's Birthdays:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, US writer (1803-1882); Jeanne Crain, US actress (1925-2003); Tom T Hall, US country singer (1936-); Dixie Carter, US actress (1939-2010); Ian McKellen, English actor (1939-); Leslie Uggams, US singer-actress (1943-); Frank Oz, director-voice of Yoda and Miss Piggy among others (1944-); Jacki Weaver, Australian actress and entertainer (1947-); Karen Valentine, US actress (1947-); Sugar Minott, Jamaican reggae singer and producer (1956-2010); Paul Weller, English musician (1958-); Julian Clary, British television personality (1959-); Mike Myers, Canadian actor and comedian (1963-); Anne Heche, US actress (1969-); Lauryn Hill, US singer (1975-); Jonny Wilkinson, English rugby player (1979-); Andy Lee, Australian comedian and radio personality (1981-).
Thought For Today:
Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbours as being very much - Zora Neale Hurston, American anthropologist (1903-1960).
