Highlights in history on this date:

1533 - Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer pronounces Anne Boleyn's marriage to King Henry VIII valid.

1849 - Death of Anne Bronte, Lạc Sơn Đại Phật English novelist and sister of Charlotte and Emily. Under the pseudonym Acton Bell, she wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

1902 - The Boers surrender in South Africa, ending the Boer War. Over 16,000 Australians served in the war: 251 were killed in action; 267 died from disease; 43 were reported missing.

1929 - The first all-colour talking picture, On with the Show, opens in New York.

1934 - World's first-known surviving quintuplets, Annette, Cecile, Emilie, Marie and Yvonne Dionne, are born on the family's farm near Callander, Ontario.

1937 - Neville Chamberlain becomes prime minister of Britain.

1940 - Two weeks after being invaded, Belgium capitulates to Germany.

1961 - Paris-Bucharest Orient Express train makes final trip after 78 years.

1971 - Soviet Union launches spacecraft toward planet Mars, containing the first capsules to land on the planet.

1972 - Former King Edward VIII, who became the Duke of Windsor in 1936 after abdicating to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson, dies in Paris aged 77.

1979 - Egypt's President Anwar Sadat announces opening of air corridors between Egypt and Israel.

1982 - In the Falklands war, British troops recapture Port Darwin and Goose Green from the Argentine army, taking at least 1400 prisoners.

1987 - Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot, lands a private plane in Moscow's Red Square after evading Soviet air defences.

1991 - Ethiopian rebels seize control of the capital of Addis Ababa, a week after the country's longtime Marxist ruler, Mengistu Haile Mariam, resigned his post and fled.

1993 - Bosnian Serbs subject Sarajevo to heavy shelling and sniper fire despite a new accord on demilitarising the city.

1995 - Bosnia's foreign minister and three colleagues are killed when rebel Serbs shoot down their helicopter.

1998 - US comic Phil Hartman of the TV sitcom News Radio is shot dead by his wife Brynn, who then turns the gun on herself.

1999 - An Indian helicopter gunship is blasted from the skies by Islamic militants in Kashmir when Indian forces try to dislodge them with airstrikes.

2000 - Sierra Leonean rebels free what appear to be the last of some 500 UN hostages held for nearly a month.

2002 - The Libyan government offers to pay $US2.7 billion to the families of 270 victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in exchange for an end to US and UN sanctions against Libya.

2003 - New York Times executive editor Howell Raines and managing editor Gerald Boyd resign five weeks after a junior reporter, Jayson Blair, quits amid allegations of fabricated reporting and plagiarism.

2006 - Pope Benedict XVI visits the Auschwitz concentration camp as "a son of the German people" and asks God why he remained silent during the "unprecedented mass crimes" of the Holocaust.

2008 - Nepal is declared the world's newest republic by lawmakers, bringing a centuries-old Hindu monarchy to an end and giving the king two weeks to leave the royal compound.

2009 - Time Warner, one of the world's biggest media companies, says it will spin out AOL as a separate company and get on with its life as a movie, television and publishing conglomerate.

2011 - Egypt lifts a four-year-old blockade of the Gaza Strip, greatly easing travel restrictions on the 1.5 million residents of the Palestinian territory.

2012 - Australia's government insists the new ASIO headquarters are secure and rejects claims they have been compromised by Chinese hackers. Gotye takes out the top gongs at the APRA Music Awards, winning Songwriter of the Year and Song of the Year for Somebody That I Used to Know.

2015 - FIFA bans 11 officials from participating in soccer-related activities after racketeering indictment announced by the US Justice Department.

2016 - Police lay charges against a man accused of supplying cannabis-laced muffins to students at a school in Toronto in the NSW Hunter region.

2017 - Schapelle Corby arrives back in Australia after serving nine years in an Indonesian prison for cannabis smuggling.

2018 - The Malaysian government says it won't extend the search for missing Malaysia Arlines flight MH370, which disappeared in the Indian Ocean in March 2015. It's a bitter blow for the families of the 239 people on board, who will never know what happened to their loved ones.

2019 - A young platypus is euthanased after it was found bound up in hairbands in a river in Victoria's Alpine Shire.

Today's Birthdays

George I, British monarch (1660-1727); Joseph Ignace Guillotin, French physician and advocate of humane capital punishment (1738-1814); William Pitt the Younger, English statesman (1759-1806); Ian Fleming, Lạc Sơn Đại Phật British writer (1908-1964); Patrick White, Australian author (1912-1990); Carroll Baker, US actor (1931-); Gladys Knight, US singer (1944-); Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City (1944-); John Fogerty, US singer (1945-); Sondra Locke, US actor (1944-2018); Jeff Fenech, Australian boxer (1964-); Kylie Minogue, Australian singer-actress (1968-); Mark Feehily, Irish musician, Westlife (1980-); Carey Mulligan, British actress (1985-); Berrick Barnes, Australian rugby player (1986-).

Thought For Today:

All the troubles of man come from his not knowing how to sit still - Blaise Pascal, French philosopher (1623-1662).