On this day
in history: February 6
1515 – Death of Aldus Manutius, Italian editor and printer who produced the first paperbacks and invented italics.
1643 – Dutch mariner Abel Tasman discovers Fiji Islands in the Pacific.
1685 – Death of Charles II, king of England, who is succeeded by James II.
1715 – Peace of Utrecht ends war between Spain and Portugal.
1778 – The US wins official recognition from France with the signing of treaties in Paris.
1804 – Joseph Priestley, English cleric and chemist, one of the discoverers of oxygen, dies.
1819 – East India Company, represented by Stamford Raffles, establishes settlement at Singapore.
1840 – Treaty of Waitangi is signed, guaranteeing Maori tribal chiefs their lands and certain other rights in return for British sovereignty over New Zealand.
1851 – Black Thursday in Victoria as devastating bushfires reach their peak, burning all around Melbourne; ten die.
1869 – Greece agrees to leave Crete following Turkish ultimatum.
1902 – French agreement with Ethiopia to finance railway construction provokes protests from Britain and Italy.
1906 – Bondi Surf Bathers Life Saving Club, believed to be the world's first life saving club, is founded in Sydney.
1918 – Women over 30 and men over 21 win the right to vote in Britain as the Representation of the People Act receives royal assent.
1922 – The Washington Conference between US, France, Japan, Italy and Britain ends with agreement on restricting use of poison gas and submarine warfare.
1933 – The 20th Amendment to the US Constitution is adopted, allowing the president to take office in January instead of March.
1938 – Five drown when 200 swept out to sea by huge seas at Bondi Beach, Sydney.
1943 – Los Angeles jury acquits Australian actor Errol Flynn of three counts of statutory rape.
1952 – Death of England's King George VI, who is succeeded by Elizabeth II.
1958 – A plane carrying the Manchester United soccer team back from a European Cup match crashes on the runway at Munich Airport. Eight members of the side nicknamed The Busby Babes after their manager Matt Busby were among the 23 killed.
1959 – The United States successfully test-fires for the first time a Titan intercontinental ballistic missile from Cape Canaveral.
1964 – England and France agree on constructing English Channel rail tunnel.
1975 – Three paintings – one by Raphael and two by Piero della Francesa – are stolen from National Gallery in Urbino, Italy.
1976 – The US Lockheed Aircraft Corp admits it had bribed officials in the Netherlands, Japan, Sweden and Italy.
1989 – Pulitzer Prize-winning American historian Barbara W Tuchman dies, aged 77.
1991 – Colombian President Cesar Gaviria pleads for peace in two-day rebel offensive that leaves at least 47 people dead.
1992 – Three days of clashes between Islamist protesters and security forces kill 12 and injure dozens in Batna, Algeria.
1993 – Death of US tennis star Arthur Ashe, of pneumonia resulting from AIDS, aged 49.
1994 – Martti Ahtisaari wins Finland's first direct presidential election.
1995 – The space shuttle Discovery flies to within metres of the Russian space station Mir in the first rendezvous of its kind in two decades.
1998 – US President Bill Clinton tells journalists he will never resign over the Monica Lewinsky scandal; Carl Wilson, co-founder of the Beach Boys, dies of cancer in the US, at age 51.
1999 – The public gets to see and hear Monica Lewinsky as excerpts of the former White House intern's videotaped testimony are shown at President Clinton's impeachment trial.
2000 – Hillary Rodham Clinton announces her candidacy for the US Senate. She later defeats the Republican candidate in November, becoming the only first lady ever elected to public office; An Afghan airlines Boeing 727 airliner carrying at least 186 people is hijacked on an internal flight. The hijack ended peacefully at Stansted Airport near London on February 10 after stops in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia.
2001 – Ariel Sharon is elected Israeli prime minister in a landslide win over Ehud Barak.
2001 – The first Chinese ship to make a legal, direct voyage to a Taiwan-held island in more than five decades docks at heavily fortified Quemoy as part of rapprochement efforts.
2002 – Athanase Seromba, a Catholic priest accused of participating in the 1994 slaughter of Tutsi by ethnic Hutu in Rwanda, surrenders to the UN Criminal Tribunal.
2003 – Hundreds of Mexican labourers protest in front of the US Embassy demanding to be paid wages they claim they are owed for working on American farms and railroads 60 years ago. The Mexicans came as guest workers starting in 1942 under an agreement aimed at filling US labour shortages caused by World War II.
2004 – An apparent suicide bombing kills at least 40 people and injures more than 100 on an underground train during morning rush-hour in Moscow.
