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.

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