On this day

From today's paper

1735 - Sir Robert Walpole became the first prime minister to occupy 10 Downing Street.

1791 - Michael Faraday, English chemist and physicist, was born. He was the inventor of the dynamo, the transformer and the electric motor. The Unit of capacitance - Farad - was named after him.

1914 - Three British cruisers, Aboukir, Hogue, and Cressy, were torpedoed and sunk by German U-boats in an hour, killing more than 1,400.

1947 - The first automatic-pilot flight over the Atlantic Ocean was made.

1955 - Independent Television (ITV) began operating. Only six minutes of advertisements were allowed each hour and there was no Sunday morning TV permitted. The first advertisement screened was for Gibbs SR toothpaste.

1967 - The liner Queen Mary began her 1000th and last Atlantic crossing. A New York docks strike meant that passengers had to carry their own luggage aboard.

1980 - The Persian Gulf conflict between Iran and Iraq erupted into full scale war.

1981 - The world's fastest train, the France TGV, took its inaugural run from Paris to Lyons.

1991 - Bryan Adams made chart history when his song - Everything I Do, I Do It For You, had its twelfth consecutive week as the UK No.1.

1994 - Friends premiered on television.

1999 - Singer Diana Ross was arrested on Concorde after an incident at Heathrow Airport. The singer claimed that a female security guard had touched her breasts when being frisked, and she retaliated by rubbing her hands down the security guard.

1817 - Spain signed a treaty with Britain to end slave trade.

1846 - Neptune, the eighth planet, was discovered by German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle.

1940 - The George Cross and the George Medal for civilian acts of courage were instituted.

1974 - The world's first Ceefax teletext service was begun by the BBC.

1987 - Britain ended arms sales to Iran.

2000 - British rower Steve Redgrave made Olympic history at the Sydney Games by winning his fifth consecutive gold medal.

622 - Mohammed and his followers commenced the Hegira, or "flight" to Medina, where he founded Islam.

1842 - Bramwell Bronte, brother of the Bronte sisters, died of drugs and drink. He was the model for the drunkard Hindley Earnshaw in Wuthering Weights.

1853 - Liverpools' Northern Daily Times became England's first provincial daily newspaper.

1960 - The USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was launched at Newport News, Virginia.

1963 - The U.S. Senate ratified a treaty with Britain and the Soviet Union limiting nuclear testing and development.

1964 - The Munsters premiered on TV.

1971 - Over 100 Russian diplomats were expelled from Britain for spying, following revelations made by a Soviet defector.

1975 - The world's highest mountain, Mount Everest, was successfully scaled for the first time via its southwest face by British climbers Dougal Haston and Doug Scott.

1066 - England's King Harold II defeated the King of Norway, at the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

1676 - Greenwich Mean Time began when two very accurate clocks are set in motion at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England. Greenwich Mean Time, now known as Universal Time, became the standard for the world in 1884.

1687 - Sir Isaac Newton published his theories on gravitation.

1818 - The first blood transfusion using human blood, as opposed to earlier attempts with animal blood, took place at Guy's Hospital in London.

1926 - Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company announced the 8-hour, 5-day work week.

1967 - Britain, France and West Germany signed an agreement to co-operate on an airbus airliner, intended to rival American production.

1983 Thirty-eight prisoners escaped from the Maze high-security jail in Northern Ireland.

1580 - Sir Francis Drake returned to Plymouth, in the Golden Hind, becoming the first British navigator to circumnavigate the earth. Drake plundered a few Spanish ships en-route to keep morale high!

1687 - The Parthenon was destroyed in the war between the Turks and the Venetians.

1829 - Scotland Yard was formed.

1879 - The world's first railway dining car was introduced in Britain on the line between London and Leeds.

1938 - Concerned about the prospect of war with Germany (which turned out to be a year away) British civilians were issued with gas masks.

1955 - Frozen Birdseye fish fingers first went on sale in Britain.

1973 - Concorde made its first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic in record-breaking time cutting the previous record in half, and flying at an average speed of 954 mph.

1984 - Great Britain formally agreed to honor the expiration of its 99 year lease on the island of Hong Kong. The agreement was signed in Peking.

1540 – The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) receives its charter from Pope Paul III.

1825 - The world’s first public railway service began with the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway. Built by George Stephenson, the track was 27 miles long, and the steam locomotive Active pulled 32 passenger wagons at ten miles per hour.

1888 - The first use of the name, 'Jack the Ripper' in an anonymous letter to the Central News Agency. He went on to kill five women, and it's believed he may have been responsible for the deaths of four more.

1938 - Cunard introduced its largest passenger liner, the Queen Mary, at Clydebank. Queen Elizabeth, consort of George VI, launched it.

1959 A typhoon battered the main Japanese island of Honshu, killing nearly 5,000 people.

1960 - Bank Underground Station in London opened Europe's first moving pavement.

1998 – Google is founded.

1066 - William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, invaded England and claimed the English throne.

1825 - George Stephenson and Richard Trevithick drove a steam locomotive at the Stockton and Darlington Railway, in England, making it the first public passenger railway.

1894 - Simon Marks, a Polish immigrant, and Yorkshireman Tom Spencer opened their Penny Bazaar in Manchester, setting the foundations for the Marks and Spencer chain.

1923 - The Radio Times was first published.

1959 - Explorer VI, the U.S. satellite, took the first video pictures of Earth.

1996 - At Ascot, Frankie Dettori became the first jockey to win all seven races at a meeting. The odds on this happening were 25,095 to 1. Bookmakers lost over £18 million pounds as a result.

2009 - Iran tested its longest-range missiles and warned they could reach any place that threatens the country, including Israel, parts of Europe and U.S. military bases in the Mideast.

1399 - Richard II of England was deposed and his cousin, Henry of Lancaster, declared himself King Henry IV.

1829 - The first regular police force in London was inaugurated. The officers became known as 'bobbies' after Robert Peel, the home secretary who founded the modern police force.

1885 - Britain's first electric trams began running, in Blackpool.

1923 - Great Britain began to govern the territory of Palestine under a mandate granted by the League of Nations. This ended 400 years of Turkish rule and 1300 years of Arab rule.

1950 - The first automatic telephone answering machine was tested by the Bell Telephone Company.

1988 - The Space shuttle Discovery was the first manned flight to launch after the Challenger disaster.

1997 - British scientists said they had established a link between a human brain disease - vCJD - and one found in cows - BSE.

1630 - John Billington, one of the original pilgrims who sailed to the New World on the Mayflower, became the first man executed in the English colonies. He was hanged for having shot another man during a quarrel.

1840 - The foundation stone for Nelson's Column was laid in Trafalgar Square.

1888 - Jack the Ripper murdered two more women - Liz Stride, found behind 40 Berner Street, and Kate Eddowes in Mitre Square, both in London's East End.

1901 - Scottish inventor Hubert Cecil Booth patented the vacuum cleaner.

1936 - Pinewood Film Studios opened near Iver, in Buckinghamshire, to provide Britain with a film studio to compete with America's Hollywood Studios in California.

1938 - Britain, France, Italy, and Germany negotiated and agreed to the partitioning of Czechoslovakia in The Munich Pact.

1939 - Identity cards were issued in Britain.

1955 - James Dean, actor, was killed in a two-car collision in California. He was 24.

1960 - The Flintstones premiered on US TV.

1967 - BBC's Radio One, went on the air.

2005 - The controversial drawings of Muhammad were printed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.