The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, Australia)
December 17, 2004 Friday

ON THIS DAY

1980 Turkish Consul-General Sarik Ariyak and his bodyguard are shot
dead by two attackers at his Vaucluse residence in Sydney. Armenian
terrorists are blamed but no one has ever been charged with the
crime.

1830 South American revolutionary leader Simon Bolivar dies.

1845 Explorer Ludwig Leichhardt arrives at Port Essington in the
Northern Territory after a 14-month, 4800km overland journey from
Moreton Bay, Queensland.

1903

Orville Wright makes the first significant flight in a plane with an
engine, covering 36m in North Carolina.

1967 Prime Minister Harold Holt, 59, disappears, presumed drowned,
while swimming at Cheviot Beach, Portsea, in Victoria.

1980 Turkish Consul-General Sarik Ariyak and his bodyguard are shot
dead by two attackers at his Vaucluse residence in Sydney. Armenian
terrorists are blamed but no one has ever been charged with the
crime.

1982 Random breath testing is introduced in NSW to deter
drink-driving. It is credited with saving hundreds of lives.

1993

Federal Treasurer John Dawkins rocks the Keating Labor Government and
financial markets with a snap decision to retire.

1996 The leftist Tupac Amaru movement seizes the Japanese
ambassador’s residence in Lima, taking hundreds of diplomats and
government officials hostage. Four months later troops storm the
building, killing all 14 guerillas.
From: Baghdasarian