James Owen - The Times On This Day - Facts and trivia for every day of the year

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1813 Sir Henry Bessemer, inventor of a steel production process that reduced the alloy’s price to a fifth of its former cost, was born in Charlton, Hertfordshire.

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1915 in the first air raid on Britain, a German zeppelin crossed the Norfolk coast and bombed Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn.

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1937 aviator Howard Hughes set a new record by flying from Los Angeles to New York in 7 hours and 28 minutes.

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1966 Indira Gandhi became India’s first woman prime minister.

1841 Britain and China signed the Convention of Chuanbi, which ceded Hong Kong to the British.

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1900 RD Blackmore, novelist ( Lorna Doone ), died.

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1900 John Ruskin, art critic, died.

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1942 Reinhard Heydrich chaired the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, which established the framework for the final solution to the Jewish question.

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1972 unemployment in the UK rose above one million for the first time since the 1930s.

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1987 Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy in Lebanon, was kidnapped in Beirut.

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1993 Audrey Hepburn, actress ( Roman Holiday , My Fair Lady ), died aged 63.

1790 Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin proposed the guillotine to the newly formed National Assembly of Paris as a humane method of execution.

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1793 King Louis XVI of France was executed (by guillotine).

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1907 taxi cabs were officially recognised in Britain.

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1911 the first Monte Carlo car rally began.

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1924 Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov), Russian revolutionary, died at Gorki, Moscow, aged 53.

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1950 George Orwell (Eric Blair), essayist and novelist, died aged 46.

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1954 the first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus , was launched.

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1976 Concorde made its inaugural commercial flight, from London to Bahrain in 3hr 37min.

1440 Ivan III, the Great, whose conquests created a consolidated Russian state, was born.

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1666 Shah Jahan, Mughal emperor of India, died.

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1788 George Gordon Byron (6th Baron Byron), poet, was born.

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1901 Queen Victoria, Britain’s monarch since 1837, died.

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1905 Russian troops fired on marching workers in St Petersburg, killing more than 500 in the first Bloody Sunday.

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1924 Ramsay MacDonald became Britain’s first Labour prime minister.

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1944 the Allied landings began in Anzio, Italy.

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1946 President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group, from which, two years later, the CIA was created.

1790 Fletcher Christian and the Bounty ’s other mutineers landed on Pitcairn Island.

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1806 William Pitt the Younger, prime minister 1783–1801 and 1804–06, died aged 46.

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1837 John Field, Irish composer who created the piano nocturne, died in Moscow.

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1883 Gustave Doré, graphic artist who illustrated such works as Dante’s Divine Comedy, died.

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1943 Tripoli was captured by British forces under Field Marshal Montgomery.

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1985 the proceedings of the House of Lords were televised for the first time.

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1989 surrealist painter Salvador Dalí died in Figueres, Spain, aged 84.

41 Gaius Caesar (Caligula), Roman Emperor from 37, was murdered.

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1664 Sir John Vanbrugh, soldier, playwright and architect of Blenheim Palace, died.

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1712 Frederick the Great, King of Prussia 1740–86, born in Berlin.

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1895 Lord Randolph Churchill, statesman and father of Sir Winston, died aged 45.

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1965 Sir Winston Churchill, prime minister 1940–45 and 1951–55, died aged 90.

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1972 a Japanese soldier, Shoichi Yokoi, was discovered on Guam, 28 years after the Japanese surrender, believing that the Second World War was still in progress.

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1984 the Apple Macintosh personal computer went on sale.

1533 King Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn in secret.

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1640 Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy , died.

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1759 Robert Burns, Scottish poet whose popularity is reaffirmed in the Burns Night celebrations, was born in Alloway, Ayr.

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1919 the League of Nations was founded to resolve international disputes.

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1924 the first Winter Olympics began in Chamonix, France.

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1947 gangster Al Capone died at home of a heart attack.

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1971 Idi Amin deposed the Ugandan president Milton Obote.

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1990 Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister of Pakistan, became the first head of government to give birth.

1790 Così fan tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was first performed in Vienna.

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1824 Théodore Géricault, painter who used corpses in the morgue as models for The Raft of the Medusa , died.

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1855 Gérard de Nerval, French Romantic poet who kept a lobster as a pet, died.

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1885 General Charles Gordon was killed at Khartoum during the rising led by the Mahdi.

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1905 the largest diamond in the world, the Cullinan, was mined at Pretoria, South Africa.

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1950 India became a republic within the Commonwealth.

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1998 President Bill Clinton denied having had sexual relations with intern Monica Lewinsky.

1302 Dante Alighieri was expelled from Florence for his political activities, and while in exile wrote his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy .

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1880 the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison was granted a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.

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1944 Leningrad (now St Petersburg) was relieved after a 28-month siege.

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1945 the Soviet army liberated 5,000 inmates of Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

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1967 Virgil Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee, astronauts, died after an electrical fault ignited pure oxygen in their Apollo 1 spacecraft.

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1972 Mahalia Jackson, the “Queen of Gospel”, died.

814 Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor since 800, died aged 71.

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1547 King Henry VIII, who had reigned since 1509, died aged 55.

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1596 Sir Francis Drake, English admiral and circumnavigator of the globe, died aged 55 at Portobelo, Panama.

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1807 London’s Pall Mall became the first street in the world illuminated by gaslight.

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1896 the first speeding fine was imposed on a British motorist for exceeding 2mph in a built-up area.

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1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after lift-off and its crew of five men and two women were killed.

1819 Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles landed in Singapore, with it becoming a British colony five years later.

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1820 King George III, who had reigned since 1760, died aged 81.

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1856 the Victoria Cross was established by royal warrant to honour acts of valour during the Crimean War.

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1860 Anton Chekhov, playwright, was born in Taganrog, Russia.

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1886 Karl Benz patented the first automobile.

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1942 Desert Island Discs was first broadcast by the BBC.

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1996 Venice’s opera house, fatefully named La Fenice (The Phoenix), was completely destroyed by fire, suspected to be arson.