Today in history, 4/10
Highlights in history on this date:
1209 - Otto IV is crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
1539 - Marriage treaty is signed for England's King Henry VIII to wed Anne of Cleves, his fourth wife.
1582 - Last day of the Julian Calendar in the Papal states, Spain and Portugal. Pope Gregory's Gregorian calendar took effect the next day, which became October 15.
1669 - Death of Rembrandt (van Rijn), Dutch painter of portraits, religious works and landscapes.
1817 - Government House in Hobart is completed.
1830 - Belgium becomes an independent state, having been part of the Netherlands since 1815.
1895 - First US Open golf tournament is held, at the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island and is won by English professional Horace Rawlins with 173 for 36 holes.
1910 - Portugal's King Manuel II flees to England on outbreak of revolution in Lisbon. A republic is declared the next day.
1931 - American comic strip Dick Tracy, created by Chester Gould, makes its debut.
1935 - Luna Park fun park opens next to Sydney Harbour.
1940 - Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and their foreign ministers hold a summit meeting on an armoured train at the Brenner Pass during World War II.
1952 - First pacemaker to control the body's heartbeat, developed by Dr Paul Zoll of Harvard University, is fitted externally to David Schwartz.
1957 - The Soviet Union puts the first spacecraft, Sputnik, into orbit around earth, heralding the start of the space age; television series Leave It to Beaver premieres in the US.
1958 - First trans-Atlantic passenger jetliner service is begun by British Overseas Airways Corporation, with flights between London and New York.
1959 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 3, which takes the first photographs of the back of the moon.
1969 - China announces two nuclear weapons tests, including hydrogen bomb explosion in atmosphere.
1970 - Janis Joplin, US blues and rock singer, is found dead of a drugs overdose.
1973 - Peace talks begin in Northern Ireland in attempt to end five years of a conflict that has taken almost 900 lives.
1986 - Fire breaks out in Soviet nuclear-powered submarine carrying ballistic missiles, and three people are reported dead.
1989 - Lebanese hijacker Fawaz Younis sentenced to 30 years in US prison.
1993 - Russian parliament leaders surrender to soldiers loyal to President Boris Yeltsin, after at least 300 die in two days of fighting.
1999 - Twenty-two workers are exposed to radiation at South Korea's Wolsung nuclear power plant from a leak of heavy water.
2001 - A Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile brings down a Russian airliner over the Black Sea, killing all 78 people on board.
2004 - US actress Janet Leigh, best known for her role in the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock thriller Psycho, dies aged 77.
2005 - Turkey opens membership negotiations with the European Union, 42 years after first being given the prospect of membership in the wealthy European bloc.
2007 - The federal government approves the $1.7 billion Gunns Ltd pulp mill for Tasmania's northeast.
2010 - The Nobel Prize in medicine goes to Robert Edwards, the Briton whose work led to the first test-tube baby.
2011 - Australian National University astronomer Brian Schmidt is named a joint winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for physics for research.
2012 - Police lay more than 20 charges against former Health Services Union president Michael Williamson over allegations he hindered their investigation into the union and he is later jailed for a minimum five years.
2014 - Death of former president of Haiti, Jean-Claude Duvalier at age 63. Duvalier presided over what was widely acknowledged as a corrupt, brutal regime until an uprising in 1986 sent him into a 25-year exile.
2015 - North Queensland Cowboys beat Brisbane Broncos 17-16 in the first NRL golden-point grand final.
2016 - The new head of Britain's UK Independence Party (UKIP) Diane James resigns after a mere 18 days of being in charge.
2017 - Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announces plans to detain terror suspects for 14 days without charge, and provide information for a national database of driver's licence photos. The proposals are widely welcomed by the states, but not civil liberties groups.
Today's Birthdays:
Francois Guizot, French politician-historian (1787-1874); Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 19th US president (1822-1893); Engelbert Dollfuss, Austrian statesman (1892-1934); Buster Keaton, US actor-comedian (1895-1966); Charlton Heston, US actor (1923-2008), Jackie Collins, British novelist (1941-2015); Susan Sarandon, US actress (1946-); Liev Schreiber, American actor (1967-); Alicia Silverstone, US actress (1976-); George Calombaris, Australian celebrity chef (1978-); Adam Voges, Australian cricketer (1979-).
Thought For Today:
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end - Lord Acton, English historian (1834-1902).
