IT HAPPENED TODAY
1777:
George Washington defeated the British at the Battle of Princeton.
1870:
Work on the Brooklyn Bridge began.
1883:
Clement Attlee, Labour Party leader and prime minister from 1945-51, was born.
1892:
Author JRR Tolkien creator of The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit, was born in South Africa. He died in Bournemouth in 1973.
1911:
The Siege of Sidney Street took place when anarchists were besieged by police in a house in London’s East End.
1924:
English explorer Howard Carter discovered the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in Egypt’s Valley of Kings.
1946:
Nazi propagandist William Joyce — the notorious Lord HawHaw — was hanged for treason.
Alaska became the 49th state of America.
1961:
The millionth Morris Minor, the highly successful British car designed by Sir Alec Issigonis, came off the assembly line at Oxford.
1997:
The death toll in Europe’s big freeze hit 220 as temperatures plunged to -10C from Britain to central Russia.
2009:
Matt Smith was named as the new Doctor Who. He became the 11th Time Lord since the programme started in 1963.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR:
A mother who was able to have an IVF baby thanks to a donation from the late singer George Michael said she “cannot thank him enough”.
BIRTHDAYS:
Stephen Stills, rock singer, 73; John Paul Jones, rock musician (Led Zeppelin), 72; Mel Gibson, actor, 62; Gavin Hastings, rugby great, 56; Michael Schumacher ( former racing driver, 49; Dominic Wood, children’s television presenter, 40.