died aged 97.
•
1990 Panama’s leader Manuel Noriega surrendered to US forces after ten days under siege in the Vatican Embassy.
1642 King Charles I entered Parliament with soldiers in a bid to arrest five MPs, sparking the English Civil War.
•
1643 Sir Isaac Newton, physicist and mathematician, was born.
•
1877 Cornelius Vanderbilt, financier and transport magnate whose steamship service flourished with the 1849 Gold Rush, died.
•
1948 after more than 100 years of British rule, Burma became an independent republic.
•
1951 Chinese Communist and North Korean troops captured Seoul during the Korean War.
•
1967 world speed record breaker Donald Campbell was killed in Bluebird on Coniston Water, Cumbria, during a record attempt.
1066 Edward the Confessor, King of England since 1042, died.
•
1592 Shah Jahan, Mogul emperor of India, who ordered the building of the Taj Mahal as a mausoleum for his wife, was born.
•
1855 King Camp Gillette, inventor of his eponymous safety razor, was born in Wisconsin.
•
1941 Amy Johnson, record-breaking aviator, died after her aircraft crashed in the Thames estuary.
•
1968 Alexander Dubcek became First Secretary of Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party, ushering in the Prague Spring.
•
1971 international one-day cricket was born when England played Australia in Melbourne, the Test match having been abandoned due to rain.
1066 Harold Godwinson was crowned King of England in succession to Edward the Confessor, prompting the Normans to invade.
•
1412 St Joan of Arc, French heroine, was born into a peasant family at Domrémy, (later called Domrémy-la-Pucelle) in the Vosges.
•
1681 the first recorded boxing match in the UK was arranged by the Duke of Albemarle between his butler and his butcher.
•
1838 in New Jersey, Samuel Morse gave the first public demonstration of his electric telegraph system.
•
1852 Louis Braille, who invented a reading and writing system for blind people, died in Paris.
1714 a patent was granted to the English engineer Henry Mill for his typewriter design.
•
1785 Blanchard and Jeffries made the first hot-air balloon crossing of the Channel.
•
1789 the first nationwide election was held in America, with George Washington elected as president.
•
1827 Sandford Fleming, Scottish engineer who divided the world into time zones, was born.
•
1955 Marian Anderson was placed under contract by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the first African-American to be so engaged.
•
1999 the impeachment trial of President Clinton began in Washington.
1337 Giotto, painter and architect, died in Florence.
•
1642 Galileo Galilei, mathematician and astronomer, died in Arcetri, Tuscany.
•
1742 Philip Astley, founder of Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre, a forerunner of the modern circus, was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme.
•
1824 Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White, was born.
•
1897 Dennis Wheatley, historical novelist and thriller writer (The Devil Rides Out), was born.
•
1935 Elvis Presley, singer, was born in Tupelo, Mississippi.
•
1940 wartime rationing of butter, bacon and sugar began in the UK.
•
1959 Charles de Gaulle was proclaimed president of the French Republic.
1799 income tax was introduced by prime minister William Pitt the Younger to raise funds for the Napoleonic Wars.
•
1806 Horatio Nelson was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral.
•
1816 Sir Humphry Davy’s safety lamp was first used in a mine.
•
1873 Napoleon III, French Emperor, died in exile in England.
•
1913 Richard Nixon, president of the United States 1969–74, was born in Yorba Linda, California.
•
1960 work began on the Aswan High Dam in Egypt and would take ten years to complete.
•
1972 the liner Queen Elizabeth was destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbour.
1840 the Penny Post was introduced.
•
1862 Samuel Colt, firearms manufacturer, died as one of America’s wealthiest men.
•
1863 the Metropolitan Railway — ancestor of the London Underground — opened between Paddington and Farringdon Street.
•
1870 the Standard Oil Company, which was to be vastly enriched by the advent of the motor car, founded by William and John D Rockefeller.
•
1917 William Cody (Buffalo Bill), US army scout, and later showman who killed 4,280 buffalo in eight months to feed railroad workers, died.
•
1946 the inaugural session of the UN general assembly opened in London.
•
1985