- 1921 – Ginger Meggs, Australia's longest-running comic strip, is first published in The Sun, a Sydney-based newspaper.
- 1952 – Lang Hancock, later one of the richest men in Australia, discovers the world's largest iron ore deposits in the Pilbara, in Western Australia.
- 1956 – The 1956 Summer Olympics, the first Olympic Games held in Australia, open at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, in Melbourne, Victoria.
- 1962 – The 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games open at Perry Lakes Stadium in Perth, Western Australia.
- 1997 – Musician Michael Hutchence (pictured), the lead singer of the band INXS, dies in Sydney.
- 2010 – Microbiologist Frank Fenner, credited with the development of the myxoma virus, which was responsible for controlling the numbers of rabbits in Australia, dies in Canberra at the age of 95.