Highlights in history on this date:
1647 - First recorded American execution of a witch in Massachusetts.
1679 - English parliament passes the Habeas Corpus Act, protecting citizens against false arrest and imprisonment.
1703 - Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of St Petersburg as Russia's new capital.
1840 - Italian virtuoso violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini dies. He wrote six concertos for violin.
1883 - Alexander III is crowned in Moscow.
1918 - German forces launch major offensive on Western Front in World War I.
1933 - Walt Disney's Academy Award-winning animated short The Three Little Pigs is released.
1936 - Britain's luxury liner Queen Mary begins maiden voyage across Atlantic Ocean.
1937 - Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin County, California, is opened to the public.
1941 - German battleship Bismarck is sunk by British Navy off France in World War II, with 2300 lives lost.
1961 - Malayan Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman proposes Great Malaysia Federation.
1965 - HMAS Sydney departs on its first voyage to Vietnam.
1967 - Australian people approve ending of constitutional discrimination against Aborigines by 90.8 per cent referendum vote.
1985 - Representatives of Britain and China exchange instruments of ratification on the pact returning Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997.
1991 - Ethiopia orders its troops to lay down arms in the face of a rebel advance.
1992 - NATO allies back plans for deployment of forces to war-torn Yugoslavia.
1993 - Car bomb outside Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, kills five and ruins centuries-old works of art.
1995 - Actor Christopher Reeve is left paralysed when thrown from his horse in Virginia.
1999 - The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands, announces the indictment of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four of his aides for war crimes in Kosovo. It's the first time a sitting head of state is indicted for war crimes.
2000 - The Protestant, pro-British Ulster Unionist Party backs its leader David Trimble and votes to return to Northern Ireland's power-sharing home-rule government.
2002 - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf delivers a nationally televised address on the threat of war with India over Kashmir. India has 750,000 troops on the border and Pakistan has 250,000.
2003 - Suspected Islamic militants kill 14 people in Tadjna in the western province of Chlef in Algeria.
2006 - An earthquake, measuring 6.3 on the richter scale, strikes the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta on Java island, killing 5782 people and leaving more than 130,000 homeless.
2007 - US and Iraqi forces free 42 kidnapped Iraqis - some of whom had been hung from ceilings and tortured for months - in a raid on an al-Qaeda hideout north of Baghdad.
2008 - Myanmar's military government renews pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's detention for one year.
2009 - Sydney switches on its first Vivid festival of light, music and ideas. North Korea threatens military strikes on US, South Korean ships and renounces a 1953 truce agreement halting the Korean War, in the wake of Pyongyang's nuclear test.
2012 - The military chief of the violent Basque separatist group is arrested in southern France along with another man accused of being his assistant.
2014 - Rolf Harris, the 83-year-old Australian entertainer, begins giving evidence in his defence at his UK sex abuse trial. He talks about his career, demonstrates the wobble board, and wings a verse of Jake The Peg for the jury. Former NSW detectives Roger Rogerson and Glen McNamara are charged with murdering student Jamie Gao in a rented storage room after an alleged drug deal gone wrong. Both would later plead not guilty.
2015 - The US government launches an attack on what it calls deep-seated and brazen corruption in soccer's global governing body, FIFA, indicting 14 influential figures on charges of racketeering and taking bribes. A heatwave in India kills at least 1100 people.
2016 - Scientists say it's only a matter of time before an antibiotic-resistant 'superbug' detected in the United States ends up in Australia. Barack Obama becomes the first sitting US president to visit the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
2018 - The makers of Sesame Street announce plans to sue the producers of The Happytime Murders, an R-rated muppet film, for misusing and tarnishing their brand.
2019 - An Australian man is recovering in a Kathmandu hospital after he was discovered unconscious on Mount Everest.
Ibn Khaldun, Arab historian (1332-1406); Sir Henry Parkes, Australian politician and NSW premier five times (1815-1896); Wild Bill Hickok, US sheriff (1837-1876); Vincent Price, US actor (1911-1993); Christopher Lee, English actor (1922-2015); Henry Kissinger, US secretary of state (1923-); Mike Gibson, Australian columnist (1940-2015); Pauline Hanson, founder Australian One Nation political party (1954-); Neil Finn, New Zealand singer (1958-); Pat Cash, Australian tennis star (1965-); Heston Blumenthal, British chef and restaurateur (1966-); Joseph Fiennes, English actor (1970-); Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes, US hip-hop singer of TLC (1971-2002); Wayne Carey, Australian rules footballer (1971-); Jamie Oliver, British chef and television personality (1975-); Michael Hussey, Australian cricketer (1975-).
Thought For Today:
Great wisdom is generous, petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous - Chuang-Tzu, Chinese essayist (c369-c286 BC)