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 1,006 convicts aboard for new settlement at Sydney Cove.
1795 - French forces overrun Holland.
1845 - Maori 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).
1938 – General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist air force bombs Spanish cities of
Barcelona and Valencia, killing 700 people.
1945 - Soviet troops take Krakow, Poland, in World War II.
1956 - Sudan joins Arab League as ninth member.
1957 - GTV 9 begins transmission in Melbourne.
960 - United States and Japan sign treaty of mutual security.
1966 - Sir Robert Menzies retires after more than 16 years as Australia’s prime minister.
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 engineer-inventor (1736-1819); Robert E Lee, US confederate general (1807-1870); Edgar Allen Poe, US writer (1809-1849); Erich Segal, author, (1938-2010), Dolly Parton, US singeractress (1946-).