IT HAPPENED TODAY
1492:
Christopher Columbus (above) sighted his first land in discovering the New World, calling it San Salvador.
1537:
Edward VI, son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, was born. He succeeded his father when he was nine, but died at 15.
1609:
Three Blind Mice was published in London, believed to be the earliest printed secular song.
1866:
Ramsay MacDonald was born in Lossiemouth, Morayshire, the illegitimate son of a crofter. In 1924 he became Britain’s first Labour Prime Minister.
1875:
Modern-day Satanist Aleister Crowley — once dubbed “the wickedest man in the world” — was born in Leamington, Warwickshire.
1901:
President Theodore Roosevelt renamed the Executive Mansion ‘The White House’.
1915:
British nurse Edith Cavell (above) who saved the lives of soldiers from both sides without discrimination and helped Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during the First World War, was executed as a spy by a German firing squad.
1984:
Five people died, and 34 were injured, in an IRA bomb attack on the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where the Conservative Party conference was being held.
2002:
202 people died in bomb attacks on two nightclubs in Bali.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR:
The Government announced that plans to encourage home energy efficiency and clean power, drive take-up of electric cars and plant new forests were among their measures to tackle climate change.
BIRTHDAYS:
Angela Rippon, (above) broadcaster, 74; Robin Askwith, actor, 68; David Threlfall, actor, 65; Hugh Jackman, actor, 50; Stephen Lee, former snooker player, 44; Josh Hutcherson, actor, 26.