Today in history, August 23: British driver breaks land-speed record

On this day, in 2006, Andy Green broke the record for fastest diesel engine vehicle travelling on land.

British pilot Andy Green hugging a crew member after breaking 1973 land-speed record.

Highlights in history on this date:

1305: Scottish rebel leader William Wallace is hung, drawn and quartered for treason in London.

1775: England’s King George II proclaims the existence of open rebellion in American colonies.

1813: The French are defeated by German army under Friedrich von Bulow, preventing a march on Berlin.

1839: Hong Kong is taken by British in war with China.

1870: Last British troops leave Australia.

1913: Copenhagen’s famous landmark, The Little Mermaid, is unveiled at the entrance of the harbour.

1914: Japan declares war on Germany in World War I.

1927: Two Italian-born anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, are executed in Massachusetts despite worldwide protests they are innocent.

1939: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a 10-year non-aggression pact; Axe murderer John Trevor Kelly becomes the last man hanged in NSW.

1942: Thirteen Japanese planes are shot down in the 24th raid on Darwin in World War II.

1944: Allied troops in France capture port of Marseilles in World War II.

1944: Romania joins the Allies and breaks its alliance with Hitler’s Germany.

1964: A footbridge collapses over a river gorge in Venezuela, and 29 people fall to their deaths in rapids below.

A misfired robbery turned into a six-day standoff and gave birth to the phrase ‘Stockholm syndrome’.

1973: Four people are taken hostage by a robber in a Stockholm bank. During the six-day drama, the captor and captives develop a friendship later described and studied as “the Stockholm syndrome”.

1975: Communists complete takeover of Laos.

1990: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appears on television with British hostages held at “a vital Iraqi installation”; East and West Germany announce they will unite on October 3.

1992: More than 500 survivors return to Singapore from the cruise ship Royal Pacific, which sank after a collision with a fishing boat.

1999: Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder starts work in Berlin, the first time Germany had been governed from its traditional capital since World War II.

2002: Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe unexpectedly dissolves his cabinet and ousts moderates in a move officials say is related to his controversial program to seize land from white farmers and redistribute it to landless black people.

2003: John Geoghan, a former Roman Catholic priest whose January 2002 sexual abuse conviction sparked a widespread abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, is beaten and strangled to death in prison.

2004: A nationwide hunt gets underway for armed thieves who barged into a lightly guarded Oslo museum and ripped the Edvard Munch masterpiece The Scream and another painting from the wall, as stunned visitors watched in shock.

2006: A British pilot breaks a land-speed record for driving with a diesel engine, racing across the Bonneville Salt Flats at more than 523km/h.

Andy Green sets a 560km/h land speed record for diesel cars at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

2007: A horse brought in from the northern hemisphere shows clinical signs of equine influenza at Sydney’s Eastern Creek quarantine centre, sparking a widespread outbreak of EI that stops racing and equestrian events in NSW and Queensland.

2008: Brisbane-based freelance photographer Nigel Brennan, 35, is abducted in Somalia, along with Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout.

2011: A pair of judges puts an end to the sensational sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, setting him free after prosecutors argued the New York hotel housekeeper accusing the French former head of the International Monetary Fund of sexual assault could not be trusted; The cost to the Queensland government of implementing the flood inquiry recommendations is put at $76 million.

2013: Another asylum seeker boat capsizes off Java, with 11 bodies recovered and 189 people rescued.

2014: Israel bombs an apartment tower in downtown Gaza City, collapsing the 12-storey building in an unprecedented strike while Hamas keeps up heavy rocket fire near the border.

2015: Usain Bolt wins the 100m gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Beijing; Typhoon Goni heads towards Japan after leaving at least 19 people dead in the northern Philippines.

2017: A Spanish man is detained by Dutch police after he was found driving a van with gas canisters near a Rotterdam venue where a rock concert was cancelled due to a threat of a possible attack.

2018: The Queen issues a message of support and a donation to Australian farmers as the drought takes its “immense toll”.

Happy birthday Rick Springfield.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Francois Hotman, French political author (1524-1590); France’s King Louis XVI (1754-1793); Gene Kelly, US actor-dancer (1912-1996); Peter Thomson, Australian golf champion (1929-2018); Keith Moon, English drummer of The Who fame (1946-1978); Rick Springfield, Australian-born pop singer (1949-); Shelley Long, US actor (1949-); Queen Noor, American-born wife of Jordan’s King Hussein (1951-); River Phoenix, American actor (1970-1993); Kobe Bryant, US basketball player (1978-); Sun Ming Ming, Chinese basketball player (1983-); Brett Morris, Australian NRL footballer (1986-).

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“Friendship is honey — but don’t eat it all” — Moroccan proverb.