IT HAPPENED TODAY
1763:
After the Seven Years’ War, the Treaty of Paris was signed, with France ceding Canada to Britain.
1824:
Samuel Plimsoll, naval reformer, was born in Bristol. He devised the Plimsoll Line, a regulation for the weight ships might safely carry.
1840:
Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
1894:
Harold Macmillan, Tory prime minister from 1957 to 1963, was born.
1913:
The bodies of Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Scott and his party were found 13 months after they disappeared on their South Pole mission.
1942:
Bandleader Glenn Miller
received the first gold disc for selling more than one million copies of Chattanooga Choo Choo.
1947:
1962:
2014:
Pay As You Earn income tax
was introduced.
Crowds gathered at shop windows in Paris to see Christian Dior’s New Look fashions — longer skirts, nipped-in waists and padded shoulders.
In Berlin, US spy-plane pilot Gary Powers, shot down by the Russians, was exchanged for KGB agent Rudolf Abel, captured in New York five years earlier.
Shirley Temple, the child star darling of US cinema who went on to become a prominent diplomat, died at the age of 85.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR:
Trainer fans braved two nights and flurries of snow to be among the first to get limited-edition Kanye West shoes.
BIRTHDAYS:
Robert Wagner, actor, 88; Roberta Flack, singer, 81; Peter Purves, TV presenter/actor, 79; Mark Spitz, Olympic swimming champion, 68; Greg Norman, golfer, 63; Garrett Reisman, former astronaut, 50; Keeley Hawes actress, 42; Chloe Grace Moretz, actress, 21.