Highlights in history on this date:

1633 - Bananas go on sale in England for the first time.

1741 - Prussia's Frederick II defeats Austrian forces at Mollwitz and conquers Silesia.

1814 - Napoleon's army is defeated by the British and Spanish at the Battle of Toulouse; leading to his abdication and exile to Elba the next day.

1837 - Governor Sir Richard Bourke proclaims the site of Melbourne.

1849 - American Walter Hunt patents the safety pin. Unable to see its possibilities, he sold all rights for a few hundred dollars.

1854 - The constitution of the Orange Free State in south Africa is proclaimed.

1912 - Luxury liner RMS Titanic sails from Southampton, England, on its ill-fated maiden voyage.

1916 - The Professional Golfers Association holds its first championship, in Bronxville, New York.

1919 - Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is killed in an army ambush in Chinameca, Mexico.

1921 - Dr Sun Yat-sen is elected president of China, by the Canton (Guangzhou) military government, which controls only a tiny portion of China.

1922 - The Genoa Conference opens to discuss the reconstruction of Europe after World War I.

1925 - The Great Gatsby, by F Scott Fitzgerald, is first published.

1932 - Paul von Hindenburg is re-elected German president, with Adolf Hitler finishing second.

1941 - Siege of Tobruk begins in World War II.

1944 - British midget submarine secretly enters Bergen harbour in Norway and sinks German merchant ship Barenfels.

1959 - Crown Prince Akihito of Japan marries a commoner, Michiko Shoda.

1961 - Former Nazi Adolf Eichmann is put on trial as a war criminal in an Israeli court in Jerusalem.

1962 - Death of Hungarian-born film director Michael Curtiz, who won an Oscar for Casablanca.

1963 - US atomic submarine Thresher sinks in the northern Atlantic and kills 129 people, the worst submarine disaster in US history.

1966 - Death of English novelist Evelyn Waugh, whose works included Scoop, The Loved One and Brideshead Revisited.

1968 - The Wahine ferry sinks in severe weather in Wellington harbour killing 51 people.
1972 - Earthquake strikes southern Iran, killing more than 5,000.

1972 - More than 50 countries sign a treaty outlawing the stockpiling of biological weapons.

1973 - In Switzerland, 108 people die when a plane crashes while attempting to land at Basel.

1974 - Golda Meir resigns as prime minister of Israel over differences within her Labour Party.

1984 - A rally to demand free presidential elections in Brazil after 20 years of dictatorship draws a million people in Rio de Janeiro.

1986 - United States conducts a nuclear test in the Nevada desert despite growing protests among peace groups and a strong Soviet campaign for a nuclear test ban.

1989 - British and Australian forces arrive in northern Namibia to monitor planned withdrawal of black nationalist guerrillas.

1992 - Three people are killed and 91 injured in a car bomb explosion in London's financial district. The IRA claims responsibility.

1993 - Chris Hani, one of South Africa's top black leaders, is murdered. Two white extremists were later convicted in the slaying.

1994 - NATO warplanes launch air strikes for the first time on Serb forces advancing on the Bosnian Muslim town of Gorazde, a UN-declared "safe area".

1994 - Paul Keating arrives in Hanoi on first visit by an Australian prime minister since the Vietnam War.

1995 - Top United Nations weapons inspector reports that Baghdad seems to be developing biological weapons; Death of former Indian prime minister Morarji Desai.

1997 - Ecuador's top court puts out a warrant for the arrest of deposed President Abdala Bucaram, prompting him to seek political asylum in Panama.

1998 - In what is heralded as the biggest breakthrough since 1969, the faction leaders of Northern Ireland and the governments of Britain and Ireland agree on a model for governing the province.

1999 - Brigadier-General Ali Sayyad Shirazi, deputy joint chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, is assassinated by "terrorist elements".

2000 - The leaders of North and South Korea agree to meet for the first time in June, marking a major step forward in relations between the two nations, which technically remain at war.

2001 - Rap star Eminem is placed on two years' probation for carrying a concealed weapon outside a Michigan nightclub.

2002 - Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the rebel Tamil separatist group, holds his first news conference since 1990 as the rebels and the Sri Lankan government prepare for the first peace talks in seven years.

2003 - In the war in Iraq, Kurdish fighters take the northern Iraqi oil city of Kirkuk, as US troops battle Saddam Hussein loyalists in Baghdad.

2003 - British Airways and Air France announce they will mothball their fuel-guzzling Concorde fleets at the end of October, ending 27 years of supersonic commercial air travel.

2006 - French President Jacques Chirac scraps a youth job law that provoked weeks of angry protests.

2007 - Four members of a notorious Serb paramilitary unit who were videotaped gunning down Bosnians near Srebrenica are convicted of war crimes, the first ruling by a Serbian court related to the systematic killings in the final months of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

2008 - Nepal holds its first election in nine years - a historic vote meant to secure lasting peace in a land riven by communist insurgents and an autocratic king.

2009 - A US immigration appeals board rules that retired auto
worker Joseph Demjanjuk can be deported to Germany to face charges he served as a Nazi death camp guard during World War II.

2010 - An ageing Russian airliner carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski and members of his country's military, political and church elites crashes in thick fog as it was taking them to a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the slaughter of thousands of Polish military officers by Soviet secret police.

2011 - Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak denies allegations he used his position to amass wealth and property in the first remarks since his ouster as hundreds of protesters in the heart of Cairo shout for him to be brought to trial.

2012 - Shining Path rebels seek a $US10 million ransom for 40 Peruvian construction workers abducted in a pre-dawn raid at the country's main natural gas field in the Amazon jungle; Raymond Aubrac, prominent leader of the French resistance against the Nazis in World War II, died age 97 in a Paris hospital.

2013 - Robert Edwards, the British scientist who won a Nobel Prize for his work on developing in vitro fertilisation (IVF), dies aged 87; An Iraqi official says the country has forced an Iranian plane headed to Syria to land in Baghdad so authorities could search for arms. No weapons were found.

2014 - President Vladimir Putin warns Europe that it may face a shutdown of Russian natural gas supplies if it fails to help Ukraine settle its enormous gas bill.