Today in History, 20/10

Highlights in history on this date:

1587 - Huguenots defeat Catholic League at Battle of Coultras, France.

1639 - France's Cardinal Richelieu secures arrest of Charles, Pretender to the Palatinate, at Moulines.

1740 - Maria Theresa becomes ruler of Austria, Hungary and Bohemia upon the death of her father, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI.

1822 - Britain's Sunday Times newspaper is published for the first time.

1827 - In the Greek War of Independence, the Turkish and Egyptian fleets are destroyed by the British, French and Russians at the Battle of Navarino.

1880 - An act of parliament changes the name Hobart Town to Hobart.

1903 - A joint commission rules in favour of the United States in a boundary dispute between the District of Alaska and Canada.

1935 - Mao Zedong and his Communist forces end their Long March at Yan'an, in Shaanxi, northwest China, one year after beginning their epic flight from Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist armies in the southeast.

1944 - US troops land on the eastern coast of Leyte Island in the Philippines, fulfilling a promise General Douglas MacArthur made when his forces retreated from the Japanese.

1947 - Hollywood comes under scrutiny as the House Un-American Activities Committee opens hearings into alleged Communist influence and infiltration within the US motion picture industry.

1960 - Penguin Books goes on trial in London, charged with contravening Britain's Obscene Publications Act by publishing DH Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover.

1964 - Police series Homicide premieres on Australian TV.

1966 - Lyndon Baynes Johnson arrives in Canberra - the first official visit to Australia by a US President.

1968 - Jackie Kennedy marries multi-millionaire Aristotle Onassis, ending nearly five years of widowhood.

1971 - West German Chancellor Willy Brandt is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1973 - Queen Elizabeth II officially opens the Sydney Opera House.

1977 - Three members of the southern US rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd are killed in the crash of a chartered plane in Mississippi.

1989 - Twenty people are killed in a collision between a Brisbane-bound coach and a semi-trailer near Grafton, NSW.

1994 - An Ansett Boeing 747 crash-lands at Sydney Airport.

1996 - Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto's conservative party scores big gains in Japan's parliamentary election but falls just short of a majority.

2000 - Egyptian-born Ali Mohamed, a US citizen who had served in the Army, pleads guilty in New York to helping plan the deadly US Embassy bombings in Africa in 1998 that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

2002 - Iraq begins to release political prisoners under an unprecedented amnesty issued by Saddam Hussein to inmates and exiles to mark his official 100 per cent endorsement in a presidential election.

2003 - Italian officials find the bodies of 13 African immigrants who died at sea in a small boat en route from Libya to Italy. Survivors of the passage said a total of at least 63 people had died of hunger and cold, and dozens of the dead were thrown overboard.

2004 - Indonesia's first directly elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, takes office.

2005 - A United Nations investigation concludes that high-ranking Syrian and Lebanese security officials were involved in the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

2008 - Taliban gunmen in Afghanistan kill Christian aid worker Gayle Williams, a British-South African national.

2009 - The Vatican announces that it is making it easier for Anglicans to convert to Roman Catholicism - a surprise move designed to entice traditionalists opposed to women priests, openly gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions.

2010 - The US says Pakistan should support Afghanistan's peace talks with the Taliban, pressing Pakistan to take stronger military action against militant groups sheltering within its borders.

2014 - A ban on burqas in public galleries of Australia's Parliament House is overturned.

2015 - Nearly 400 mostly elderly South Koreans are reunited with family members in North Korea, in an emotional meeting more than 60 years after they were separated by the Korean War.

2016 - Tabcorp and Tatts announce they are merging into a single $11.3 billion gaming giant.

Today's Birthdays:

Sir Christopher Wren, English architect (1632-1723); Arthur Rimbaud, French author (1854-1891); Bela Lugosi, Dracula actor (1882-1956); Sir James Chadwick, British physicist (1891-1974); Wanda Jackson, US country singer (1937-); Tom Petty, US singer (1950-2017); Danny Boyle, British film director (1956-); Michelle Bridges, Australian fitness trainer (1970-); Snoop Dogg, US rapper (1971-); Dannii Minogue, Australian singer-actor (1971-); Elka Graham, Australian swimmer (1981-).

Thought for Today:

Morals is not preaching, it is beauty of a rare kind - Ernest Dimnet, French priest, lecturer and author (1866-1954).

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