On this day: US plane crashed into Empire State Building
National day of Peru.
1586: The first potatoes arrived at Plymouth, brought from Colombia by Sir Thomas Harriot.
1809: The Battle of Talavera in the Peninsular War ended, with the Duke of Wellington victorious over French Marshal Soult.
1868: The East Coast War broke out in New Zealand.
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Hide Ad1914: Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, signalling start of First World War.
1917: The formation of the Royal Tank Corps was authorised.
1928: The ninth Olympic Games opened in Amsterdam.
1938: The British liner Mauretania was launched at Birkenhead, Merseyside.
1945: US Army B-25 bomber crashed into Empire State Building in New York City, setting it ablaze and killing 13 people.
1956: A US B-47 bomber crashed at Lakenheath Air Base, Suffolk, and damaged three atom bombs. It was hushed up for 23 years.
1965: Edward Heath became leader of the Conservative Party.
1967: The steel industry was renationalised.
1976: Britain severed relations with government of Uganda’s president, Idi Amin.
1976: One of the greatest natural disasters of recent centuries occurred when an earthquake hit Tangshan in China, killing more than 800,000 people.
1977: Ian Botham made his debut in Test cricket when he played against Australia at Trent Bridge.
1984: The 23rd Olympic Games opened in Los Angeles.
1987: Laura Davis became the first British golfer to win the US Women’s Open.
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Hide Ad1988: Paddy Ashdown, a former commando aged 47, was elected as leader of the new Social and Liberal Democrats.
1990: After a coup attempt in Trinidad and Tobago, Muslim rebels held the prime minister hostage.
1991: At Westminster, the Tories named and demanded the purging of 27 Labour MPs who, they alleged, supported the Militant Tendency.
1993: Mike Atherton, of Lancashire, was appointed England cricket captain.
2001: Australian Ian Thorpe became the first swimmer to win six gold medals at a single World Championships.
2005: The Provisional Irish Republican Army called an end to its 30-year-long terrorist campaign in Northern Ireland.
BIRTHDAYS
Ian McCaskill, former television weatherman, 74; Elizabeth Berkley, actress, 42; Alan Brownjohn, poet, novelist and critic, 83; Michael Carrick, footballer, 33; Dustin Milligan, actor, 29; Ricardo Muti, conductor, 73; Sir Garfield Sobers, cricketer, 78; Doug Walker, Inverness-born former sprinter, 41; Jim Davis, cartoonist (Garfield), 69; George Cummings, guitarist (Dr Hook and the Medicine Show), 76.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1844 Gerard Manley Hopkins, poet and Jesuit priest; 1866 Beatrix Potter, author and illustrator; 1887 Marcel Duchamp, artist, sculptor, writer; 1904 Lord Selwyn-Lloyd, politician; 1929 Jacqueline Onassis, former US first lady; 1954 Hugo Chavez president of Venezuela.
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Hide AdDeaths: 1057 Pope Victor II; 1540 Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex; 1655 Cyrano de Bergerac, novelist and playwright; 1741 Antonio Vivaldi, violinist and composer; 1750 Johann Sebastian Bach, composer; 1794 Maximilien de Robespierre, French Revolution leader; 1865 Dr Edward Pritchard, poisoner (last public hanging in Scotland); 1916 Henry James, writer; 2004 Francis Crick,
co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.