1633: Bananas go on sale in England for the first time.

1741: Prussia’s Frederick II defeats Austrian forces at Mollwitz and conquers Silesia.

1814: Napoleon’s army is defeated by the British and Spanish at the Battle of Toulouse, leading to his abdication and exile to Elba the next day.

1834: Death at Camden, NSW, of Australian wool pioneer John Macarthur.

1837: Governor Sir Richard Bourke proclaims the site of Melbourne.

1849: American Walter Hunt patents the safety pin. Unable to see its possibilities, he later sells all rights for a few hundred dollars.

1912: RMS Titanic sails from the English port of Southampton on its ill-fated maiden voyage.

1919: Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is killed in an army ambush in Chinameca, Mexico.

1925: The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is first published.

1941: Siege of Tobruk begins in World War II.

1944: British midget submarine secretly enters Bergen harbour in Norway and sinks German merchant ship Barenfels.

1959: Crown Prince Akihito of Japan marries a commoner, Michiko Shoda.

1961: Former Nazi Adolf Eichmann is put on trial as a war criminal in an Israeli court in Jerusalem.

1968: The Wahine ferry sinks in severe weather in Wellington harbour killing 51 people.

1972: More than 50 countries sign a treaty outlawing the stockpiling of biological weapons.

1974: Golda Meir resigns as prime minister of Israel over differences within her Labour Party.

1989: British and Australian forces arrive in northern Namibia to monitor planned withdrawal of black nationalist guerillas.

1994: Paul Keating arrives in Hanoi for the first visit by an Australian prime minister since the Vietnam War.

1995: Top United Nations weapons inspector reports that Baghdad seems to be developing biological weapons.

2001: Rap star Eminem is placed on two years’ probation for carrying a concealed weapon outside a Michigan nightclub.

2003: British Airways and Air France announce they will mothball their Concorde fleets at the end of October, ending 27 years of supersonic commercial air travel.

2009: A US immigration appeals board rules that retired car worker Joseph Demjanjuk can be deported to Germany to face charges he served as a Nazi death camp guard during World War II.

2010: An ageing Russian airliner carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski and members of his country’s military, political and church elites crashes in thick fog, killing all 96 people on-board.

2014: Australia’s former foreign minister Bob Carr releases his diaries in which he likens business-class air travel to slavery.

2015: Richie Benaud, Australian cricket captain who went on to become the game’s most famous broadcaster, dies in Sydney, aged 84.

2017: Former AWB chairman Trevor Flugge is banned from company management for five years and fined $50,000 for failing to uncover the truth about the wheat exporter’s secret kickbacks to Iraq.

2018: “Flippy” the burger-flipping robot is taken offline after working just one day at a Californian fast-food restaurant because he can’t keep up with demand. He returns to work in May, dazzling hungry customers on his own “Flippy’s Kitchen” stage.

2019: Rugby Australia denounces comments by Wallabies star Israel Folau, who warned homosexuals, drunks, adulterers and other “sinners” were destined for hell.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:

William Hazlitt, English essayist (1778-1830); Lewis Wallace, US novelist (Ben Hur), soldier and diplomat (1827-1905); William Booth, English founder of Salvation Army (1829-1912); Joseph Pulitzer, US journalist (1847-1911); Max Von Sydow, Swedish actor (1929-2020); Omar Sharif, Egyptian actor (1932-2015); Bunny Wailer, Jamaican musician (1947); Sophie Ellis-Bextor, British singer (1979); Mandy Moore, US singer-actor (1984); Daisy Ridley, British actor (1992); Thanasi Kokkinakis; Australian tennis player (1996).

THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

“Take from me the hope that I can change the future, and you will send me mad.” – Israel Zangwill, English dramatist (1864-1926).