Highlights in history on this date:

1012 - Archbishop of Canterbury Aelfheah is murdered by Danes ravaging the south of England.

1689 - Death of Queen Christina of Sweden, who abdicated in 1654 because of her secret conversion to Roman Catholicism, which was proscribed in Sweden.

1775 - War of American Independence opens with defeat of British at Lexington and Concord.

1783 - US Congress announces end of War of American Independence.

1824 - English poet Lord Byron dies of a fever while aiding Greek rebels fighting the Turks.

1850 - The Clayton-Bulwer agreement is signed by which Britain and the United States agree not to obtain exclusive control of a proposed Panama canal.

1853 - Russia claims protectorate over Turkey in a prelude to the Crimean War.

1856 - The Adelaide-Port Adelaide Railway was opened.

1881 - Death of British statesman Benjamin Disraeli.

1882 - Death of British naturalist Charles Darwin, who developed the theory of evolution.

1892 - Prototype of the first commercially successful American car is completed in Springfield, Massachusetts, by Charles Duryea and his brother Frank.

1897 - First Boston Marathon is run. The winner, John McDermott ran the course in two hours, 55 minutes and 10 seconds.

1898 - US Congress passes a resolution recognising Cuban independence and demanding that Spain relinquish authority over the Caribbean island.

1906 - French chemist and physicist Pierre Curie is run over and killed in Paris.

1917 - USS Magnolia sinks a German submarine to mark America's entry into World War I.

1921 - Government of Ireland Act goes into effect, separating the island into Southern and Northern Ireland, both with limited self-rule within Great Britain.

1927 - US actress Mae West is found guilty of indecent behaviour in her Broadway production Sex and jailed for 10 days.

1928 - Japan occupies Shantung in China.

1931 - Plane carrying first load of England-Australia airmail, crashes en route from England at Koepang; Sir Charles Kingsford Smith later "rescues" the airmail and flies it to Darwin.

1933 - United States goes off the gold standard.

1943 - Uprising of some 50,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto against Nazis begins.

1956 - Prince Rainier of Monaco marries US film star Grace Kelly.

1960 - Demonstrations against South Korea's founding president Syngman Rhee's regime turn violent, costing scores of lives over the next few days.

1964 - Coalition government in Laos is deposed by right-wing military group.

1966 - First Australian conscripts leave Sydney to fight in Vietnam.

1967 - Death of West German statesman and chancellor Konrad Adenauer.

1971 - Russia launches its Salyut space station into earth's orbit.

1977 - Police in South Korea carry out nationwide roundup of political opponents of government.

1979 - In the Central African Empire, 150 children are massacred at the Ngaragba prison.

1982 - Astronauts Sally Ride and Guion Bluford Jr become the first woman and first African-American to be tapped for US Space missions.

1989 - Death of British novelist Daphne du Maurier, author of Jamaica Inn and Rebecca.

1993 - More than 80 Branch Davidian cult members are killed when federal agents storm their compound in Waco, Texas, after a 51-day standoff.

1994 - A jury awards $US3.8 million to Rodney King, the African-American motorist beaten up by Los Angeles police officers.

1995 - In the worst terrorist attack on US soil, a truck bomb destroys a government building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds. Timothy McVeigh was later convicted of federal murder charges and executed.

1997 - In Kisangani, rebel leaders block a massive UN airlift of Rwandan refugees, insisting that impassable Zairean roads be fixed and used instead.

1997 - The first ship to sail directly to Taiwan from rival China in 48 years steams into Kaohsiung port, completing an historic crossing of one of the world's great political divides.

1998 - The leaders of 34 countries in the Western Hemisphere, gathered at the Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile, agree to take steps to create the world's largest free trade zone.

1999 - German parliament gathers for first time in renovated Reichstag, symbolising government's return to Berlin.

2000 - In the country's worst aviation disaster, an Air Philippines plane crashes in the southern Philippines, killing all 131 people aboard.

2001 - Pharmaceutical companies drop a lawsuit against South Africa ending an international battle over patent rights and profit. The suit stemmed from a law that sought cheaper, generic AIDS drugs for millions of Africans.

2002 - The space shuttle Atlantis returns to Earth after installing the first girder in what eventually will be a giant framework at the international space station.

2003 - About 100 striking Nigerian oil workers seize four offshore rigs and hold hostage 97 expatriate workers as well as more than 150 Nigerian nationals who refused to join the strike.

2004 - Author and sport commentator Norris McWhirter, who founded Guinness World Records with his twin brother Ross, dies. He was 78.

2005 - Joseph Ratzinger of Germany appears on a Vatican balcony as the 265th pontiff, Benedict XVI, as tens of thousands gather in St Peter's Square to cheer him.

2006 - Japan pushes ahead with a maritime survey near disputed islands over South Korea's strenuous objections, risking a showdown with Seoul and further damaging relations between the tense neighbours; Jason Gillespie makes 201 not out in the Australia v Bangladesh 2nd Test in Bangladesh.

2007 - After six years of wrangling, European Union members agree to watered-down rules for combating racism and hate crimes across the 27-nation bloc, including setting jail sentences for those who deny or trivialise the Holocaust.

2008 - Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan appears on a video aired by an Arab satellite channel, saying he was kidnapped by Taliban militants more than two months ago. Ambassador Tariq Azizuddin is released May 17.

2009 - Turkish Cypriot nationalists win a parliamentary election that could stifle a promising effort to reunite Cyprus, an ethnically divided Mediterranean island.

2010 - Toyota hurriedly orders recalls of nearly 10,000 Lexus SUVs for possible rollover dangers Monday and agrees to a record $16.4 million fine for a slow response in its broader earlier recall, scrambling to fix safety worries that threaten the Japanese auto giant's reputation.

2010 - Convicted gangland murderer Carl Williams, 39, dies at Barwon Prison after suffering head injuries in an assault. A 36-year-old fellow high-security unit inmate the next day is charged with murder.

2011 - Syria does away with 50 years of emergency rule but emboldened and defiant crowds accuse President Bashar Assad of simply trying to buy time while he clings to power in one of the most repressive regimes in the Middle East.

2012 - India's successful test of a powerful new missile that can carry nuclear weapons to Beijing causes barely a ripple - even in China - just days after North Korea was globally vilified for a failed rocket launch.

2012 - Men At Work's Greg Ham is found dead at the age of 58 in his Melbourne home. He had been angry and embarrassed about a copyright controversy over the flute riff he played on the band's global hit Down Under.

2013 - Former Pakistan military ruler Pervez Musharraf vows to fight what he calls politically motivated allegations against him, following his arrest in a case involving his decision to fire senior judges while in power.

2014 - The captain of a ferry that sank off South Korea, leaving more than 300 missing or dead is, arrested on suspicion of negligence and abandoning people in need.