Today in History, 6/9
Highlights in history on this date:
1522 - Juan Sebastian Del Cano completes the first circumnavigation of the world.
1620 - Pilgrims sail on the Mayflower from Plymouth, England, to settle in the New World.
1666 - Great Fire of London ends after destroying much of the city.
1715 - Jacobite uprising known as The Fifteen begins at Braemer in Scotland.
1813 - The French under Marshal Michel Ney are defeated by Prussians at Dennewitz in Germany.
1859 - Brisbane is incorporated as capital of Queensland.
1898 - Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands is inaugurated.
1901 - US president William McKinley is shot by an anarchist and dies eight days later.
1914 - First battle of the Marne begins in World War I.
1923 - Relief ship leaves Sydney with supplies for some of one million homeless victims of a Japanese earthquake.
1930 - President Hipolito Yrigoyen of Argentina is toppled by a military coup.
1933 - Car windscreen wipers made compulsory in Victoria.
1941 - Jews over the age of six in German-occupied areas are ordered to wear yellow Stars of David.
1944 - The German V-2 missile, the precursor of modern ballistic missiles, is used for the first time, against Paris.
1948 - Queen Juliana of the Netherlands is crowned.
1951 - Prince Talal is proclaimed king of Jordan after the assassination of his father King Abdullah in July.
1952 - Death of Gertrude Lawrence, British actress who teamed up with Noel Coward in many stage shows of the 1920s.
1955 - Anti-Greek riots break out in Istanbul and Izmir in Turkey.
1960 - Ten skeletons are found in 3800-year-old grave near Stonehenge, southern England.
1965 - India invades West Pakistan and bombs city of Lahore.
1966 - Prime Minister Hendrik F Verwoerd of South Africa, a staunch apartheid supporter, is stabbed to death by an immigrant from Mozambique during a parliament session in Cape Town.
1970 - Palestinian guerrillas seize control of three jetliners that are later blown up on the ground in Jordan after passengers and crews are evacuated.
1972 - The summer Olympics resume in Munich, West Germany, a day after the deadly hostage crisis.
1975 - Czech tennis player Martina Navratilova seeks political asylum in the US.
1988 - Thomas Gregory, aged 11, becomes the youngest person to swim the English Channel from Cap Griz-Nez to Shakespeare Point, Dover.
1989 - Cuban airliner crashes into suburb on take-off from Havana, killing 170 people.
1991 - Soviet Union recognises the independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
1994 - Irish premier Albert Reynolds and Gerry Adams, leader of the IRA-allied Sinn Fein party, commit to peaceful settlement in Northern Ireland.
1997 - Princess Diana is buried after a funeral service at Westminster Abbey seen by millions around the world.
1999 - Indonesia imposes martial law in East Timor as thousands of people flee the province and pro-Indonesian militias continue a wave of terror.
2002 - Russian authorities discover a mass grave in the Russian republic of Chechnya, near the border of Ingushetia.
2003 - Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas resigns after a prolonged power struggle with Palestinian President Yasir Arafat.
2006 -Indonesia's Supreme Court upgrades sentences from life to death by firing squad for Bali Nine members Scott Rush, Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, Si Yi Chen and Matthew Norman.
2008 - WA state election sees Labor lose its 17-seat majority. The Liberals go on to form government in alliance with the Nationals.
2012 - French authorities struggle to explain why no one found a four-year-old girl for eight hours at a blood-strewn crime scene as she huddled in a car under the skirt of her mother's corpse.
2015 - Australian all-rounder Shane Watson announces his retirement from Test cricket, as another injury cuts his UK tour short.
2016 - Terror group Islamic State urges lone-wolf killings of Australians in their backyards, their suburban streets and public places like the Sydney Opera House and the MCG.
2017 - Hurricane Irma, a storm roughly the size of Tasmania, roars into the Caribbean on a potentially catastrophic path towards the United States.
Today's Birthdays:
Moses Mendelssohn, German philosopher (1729-1786); Marie Joseph du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, French politician and soldier (1757-1834); John Dalton, English chemist (1766-1844); Montague Norman, English economist (1871-1950); John James Rickard Macleod, Scottish physiologist and Nobel laureate (1876-1935); Nigel Westlake, Australian musician and composer (1958-); John Polson, Australian director-actor (1965-); Saeed Anwar, Pakistani cricketer (1968-); Shane Heal, Australian basketball player and coach (1970-); Dolores O'Riordan, Irish singer in The Cranberries (1971-2018); Tim Henman, English tennis player (1974-) Nina Persson, Swedish singer (1974-); Pippa Middleton, sister of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (1983-).
Thought for Today:
Laziness is often mistaken for patience - French proverb.