IT HAPPENED TODAY
English explorer and navigator Sir Francis Drake (above) began his voyage to sail around the world.
William Pitt the Elder, 1st Earl of Chatham, was born in London.
Astronomer Sir William Herschel, who discovered Uranus, was born in Hanover. He died in Slough in 1822.
Isaac Pitman’s stenographic sound-hand, the first shorthand system, was published, price 4d.
Winston Churchill was captured by the Boers while covering the war as a reporter for the Morning Post. He escaped a few weeks later.
Rampant inflation in Germany reached a peak when the mark (4.2 to the dollar in 1914) rose to 4,200,000,000 to the dollar.
Elvis Presley (below) starred in his first film, Love Me Tender, which was premiered in New York.
The Cunard flagship Queen Elizabeth docked at Southampton for the last time. She was replaced by the Queen Elizabeth II.
ITV channel ATV screened the first colour television commercial in the UK — for Birds Eye peas.
The Greenham Common women’s group mounted their first protest as cruise missiles arrived at the US airbase in Berkshire.
Moors murderer Myra Hindley died in jail, aged 60.
An artist paid $730,000 for a Banksy artwork painted on the side of a Poundland in London and vowed to whitewash it.
EdAsner,actor,90;Petula Clark, singer, 87; Sam Waterston, actor, 79; Frida Lyngstad (above), singer (ABBA), 74; Beverly D’Angelo, actress, 68; Johnny Lee Miller, actor, 47; Peter Phillips, son of the Princess Royal and Capt Mark Phillips, 42; Gemma Atkinson, actress, 35.