On this day

1711 - The first race meeting was held at Ascot, established by Queen Anne, thus giving them the status of 'Royal Ascot'.

1925 - Britain introduced the Daylight Saving Act - bringing in British summer time so the nation changed clocks by one hour twice a year.

1926 - The first British motor racing Grand Prix was staged at Brooklands - 110 laps of the track for a total distance of 287 miles.

1942 - U.S. forces landed at Guadalcanal, marking the start of the first major allied offensive in the Pacific during World War II.

1958 - The Litter Act came into force in London as part of the Keep Britain Tidy campaign.

1296 - The Stone of Scone, on which Scottish kings had been crowned for centuries, was seized by King Edward I of England.

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for St. Helena, in the South Atlantic, to spend the remainder of his days in exile.

1918 - World War I -The start of the Battle of Amiens - Allied troops advanced against 20 German divisions and took 16,000 prisoners within 2 hours.

1940 - The German Luftwaffe began a series of daylight air raids on Britain and so began The Battle of Britain which would continue into the following October.

1963 - The Great Train Robbery, in which over £2.5 million was stolen, took place near Bletchley, Buckinghamshire. The day of the train robbery also happened to be the 34th birthday of Ronnie Biggs, one of the robbers.

1974 - President Richard Nixon announced he would resign following damaging revelations in the Watergate scandal.

1986 - David Crosby (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) was released from prison after serving a sentence for drug and weapons possession.

1989 - Danny Elfman's musical score "Batman: Motion Picture Score" was released.

1992 - James Hetfield (Metallica) was injured by a stage explosion at a concert in Montreal. A riot occurred at the same show when Axl Rose cut Guns 'N' Roses' set short because of a sore throat.

2000 - Attorney generals in 28 states filed a lawsuit that alleged that record companies forced discount stores to raise CD prices in 1995.

2006 - Travis Barker (Blink-182) filed for a divorce from ex-beauty queen Shanna Moakler.

1721 - Prisoners at Newgate Jail were used as 'guinea pigs' to test vaccines used against disease.

1796 - Horatio Nelson captured the island of Elba, to which Napoleon Bonaparte was later exiled.

1870 - The Elementary Education Act was passed. It gave compulsory, free education to every child in England and Wales between the age of five and 13.

1902 - Following a six week delay due to an emergency appendectomy, Edward VII was crowned in Westminster Abbey following the death of his mother Queen Victoria.

1914 - World War I: HMS Birmingham sank a German submarine, the first to be sunk by the Royal Navy.

1945 - The United States exploded a nuclear device over Nagasaki, Japan, instantly killing an estimated 39,000 people. The explosion came three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

1979 - Brighton established the first nudist beach in Britain, despite protests from those fearing depravity.

1675 - King Charles II laid the foundation stone of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. The observatory was built to provide English navigators with accurate tables of the positions of the moon and stars.

1842 - Britain passed the Mines Act - forbidding women and children from working underground.

1889 - The screw bottle top was patented by Dan Rylands of Hope Glass Works, Yorkshire.

1897 - The founding the the RAC - the Royal Automobile Club - originally known as the Automobile Club of Great Britain.

1961 - Britain applied for membership of the EEC - the European Economic Community.

1998 - English football club Manchester United became the first club in the world to have its own TV channel - MUTV.

2003 - The hottest day ever in Britain. Temperatures exceeded 100°F for the first time.

1587 - Walter Raleigh's second expedition to the New World landed in North Carolina.

1909 - The first recorded use of the new emergency wireless signal SOS.

1941 - President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter, largely to demonstrate public solidarity between the Allies.

1942 - Barnes Wallis patented his 'bouncing bomb', used successfully to destroy German dams in the 2nd World War.

1998 - British Petroleum stunned the money markets by announcing it had agreed to merge with Amoco Corp of the United States in a deal billed as the largest industrial merger.

1999 - Up to 350m people throughout Europe and Asia witnessed the last total solar eclipse of the century.

1968 - The first Beatles single on their own Apple Records was released. The single was "Hey Jude" b/w "Revolution."

1972 - Elvis and Pricilla Presley filed for divorce. They had married in May of 1967.

1973 - After seeing KISS play at a New York hotel, producer Bill Aucion offered to become their manager and promised a record deal.

1999 - KISS received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1865 - Joseph Lister became the first doctor to use disinfectant during surgery.

1877 - British explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley reached the mouth of the Congo River.

1898 - Hawaii was formally annexed to the United States.

1944 - The first PLUTO (Pipe Line Under the Ocean) supplying fuel across the English Channel to the Allied forces in France, went into operation from the Isle of Wight. It could transfer up to 700 tons of fuel a day.

1949 - Big Ben ran at its slowest for 90 years as flocks of starlings took roost on the minute hands, slowing it by four and a half minutes.

1953 - The Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.

1964 - A massive manhunt got under way across Britain after Charlie Wilson, one of the gang involved in the Great Train Robbery, broke out of a high-security prison in Birmingham.

1998 - Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion as restitution to Holocaust survivors to settle claims for their assets.

2000 - The Russian nuclear submarine Kursk and its 118-man crew were lost during naval exercises in the Barents Sea.

1521 - Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez captured present-day Mexico City from the Aztecs.

1814 - The Cape of Good Hope Province became a British colony when it was given over to the British by the Dutch for £6 million.

1888 - John Logie Baird, Scottish television pioneer was born.

1899 - Director Alfred Hitchcock was born in London.

1960 - The first two-way telephone conversation by satellite took place with the help of Echo 1, a balloon satellite.

1964 - The last hangings in Britain took place when two men were executed for murder at Liverpool and Manchester. Peter Allen, in Liverpool, and John Walby, in Manchester.

1991 - Britain introduced the Dangerous Dog Act in which aggressive dogs must be muzzled and held on a leash in public.

1995 - Alison Hargreaves, British mountaineer and the first woman to make a solo summit of Mt. Everest without supplemental oxygen, died descending K2 during a severe storm.

1040 - King Duncan of Scotland was murdered by Macbeth, who then became king and ruled for 17 years.

1852 - The first public lavatory was opened, on London's Fleet Street.

1900 - International forces entered Beijing to put down the Boxer Rebellion, which was aimed at purging China of foreigners.

1941 - The last execution in the Tower of London took place.

1945 - World War II: Following the dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered to the Allies, ending World War II.

2003 - A blackout hit the northeastern United States and part of Canada; 50 million people lost power.