Highlights in history on this date:

1793: Louvre Museum in Paris opens to public.

1895: Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, German physicist, discovers X-rays.

1907: Australian Arbitration Court Justice Higgins sets minimum wage: two guineas for a six-day week.

1923: Adolf Hitler stages unsuccessful coup in Munich that comes to be known as the Beer-Hall Putsch.

1933: Nadir Shah, ruler of Afghanistan, is assassinated and succeeded by his son, Mohammed Zahir Shah.

1939: Seven people are killed when bomb explodes at Buergerbraukeller in Munich just after Hitler delivers speech on the anniversary of the abortive 1923 putsch.

1942: Allied forces begin landings in North Africa, beginning the Algeria-Morocco campaign of World War II.

1944: The Tasmanian Australian National Football League is instituted.

1960: John F. Kennedy elected US president.

1972: West and East Germany end 23 years of Cold War antagonism by signing a good-neighbour treaty pledging mutual respect for each other.

1978: Pope John Paul II calls human rights "the great effort of our time".

1988: Nearly 9000 foreign tourists are evacuated from Sri Lankan beach resorts after Sinhalese extremists threaten to attack South Coast hotels.

1989: Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega offers to end arms imports to his country in exchange for demobilisation of Contra rebels.

1990: US President George Bush orders 200,000 more US troops to the Persian Gulf in preparation for an attack on Iraq.

1992: Japanese escort ship collides with a Greenpeace boat tracking a freighter loaded with plutonium.

1994: France arrests 95 people in its biggest sweep against Islamic militants.

1996: Australia bars Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams from entering the country because of his "intimate association" with the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

1998: In Bangladesh, 15 former military commanders are sentenced to death for the 1975 assassination of the country's first prime minister.

2000: Canadian writer Margaret Atwood wins Britain's coveted Booker Prize for her novel The Blind Assassin.

2 001: The discovery of eight remains - five skeletons and the partially clad bodies of three young women - in Mexico ignites fear that a series of 57 rape-murders did not end in the 1990s.

2003: A car bomb detonates in a residential compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing at least 17 people and wounding more than 120 others. Most of the victims are believed to be Arab Muslims.

2004: Muslim groups ask the Dutch government to protect Islamic sites after an elementary school is bombed - the latest in escalating tensions following the killing of a filmmaker, allegedly by an Islamic radical.

2005: France declares a state of emergency after nearly two weeks of rioting in heavily immigrant suburbs of Paris and other cities.

2008: New Zealand goes to the polls and elects a National Party government led by John Key, ending nine years of Labour rule under Helen Clark.

2009: Iraq's parliament ends weeks of debate and passes a long-delayed law paving the way for the planned January election to go forward, sidestepping a crisis that could have delayed the US troop withdrawal.

2 010: Scientists at the world's largest atom smasher in Geneva say they have succeeded in recreating conditions shortly after the Big Bang.

2011: The Gillard Government's controversial carbon tax passes Federal Parliament.

2012: Iran bans the import of 75 luxury products as Western economic sanctions increasingly choke off its commerce and critical oil revenue.

2013: The Qantas heavy maintenance base at Avalon closes with the loss of 300 jobs.

2014: Australian grandmother Toni Anne Ludgate is found dead in India after a two-month search, with three men facing murder charges.

2015: Detainees riot at Christmas Island following the death of asylum seeker Fazel Chegeni after he escaped from a detention centre.

2016: US Republican Donald Trump is elected the nation's 45th president after a close and often highly animated contest with his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

2017: The Cowboys co-captain and indigenous mentor Johnathan Thurston is named Queensland's Australian of the Year for 2018.

2018: Tesla announces Australian Robyn Denholm, the chief financial officer at Telstra, will replace Elon Musk as the company's chair.

TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS:

Bram Stoker, British author (1847-1912); Margaret Mitchell, US author of Gone With The Wind (1900-1949); Claudio Bravo Camus, Chilean hyperrealist artist (1936-2011); Rickie Lee Jones, US singer-songwriter (1954); Gordon Ramsay, British chef and TV personality (1966); Chris Fydler, Australian swimmer and Olympic official (1972); Tara Reid, US actor (1975); Sam Sparro, Australian producer, songwriter, performer (1982).

THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

"Man is born to live, not to prepare for life." - Boris Pasternak, Russian author (1890-1960).