1883: Sydney High School enrolled its first students. Founded in 1883 and administered by the New South Wales Department of Education, the school is an Australian Government-funded, single-sex academically selective boys' secondary day school located in Moore Park, New South Wales, a suburb of the Sydney City Council.


1933: Australia's first traffic lights started operating in Sydney. Instructions for lights and signals were widely published, but they were all but ignored by many drivers at the time. In 1935 it was decided to introduce more signals at various points in the city and on some of the main roads. It would be many years before the Australian capital, Canberra, installed its first two sets of traffic lights on October 23, 1965.


1982: Swimmer Ian Thorpe was born in Milperra. He has won 5 Olympic gold medals, the most by an Australian since fellow swimmer Emma McKeon. He also won 11 world championship gold medals, the fifth most gold medals won by a male swimmer. His sporting achievements have made him one of Australia's most popular athletes and in 2022 he was inducted into the Australian Swimming Hall of Fame for the first time.


2019: The federal and NSW governments would invest $1 billion in water infrastructure to help rural and regional communities affected by NSW's devastating drought. Conservation groups condemned the plan, saying dams did not provide water security and that cutting the amount of water allocated to large irrigators was the best way to address shortages.


2020: A 23-year-old worker fell 20 meters to his death after the roof of a building under construction at Curtin University in Perth collapsed. Two other men, aged in their 20s, were taken to Royal Perth Hospital with multiple injuries. Two construction workers were working on the canopy when it suddenly collapsed without warning and both fell more than 20 meters to the ground.