IT HAPPENED TODAY
1535:
Sir Thomas More, (above) English statesman and Lord Chancellor, was executed on Tower Hill for refusing to accept Henry VIII as head of the Church of England.
1685:
The Battle of Sedgemoor in Somerset – the last on English soil – took place with victory for James II’S Royalist forces over the rebels under the Duke of Monmouth.
1875:
South Cliff Tramway, the first cliff railway, opened in Scarborough.
1885:
Louis Pasteur administered his first successful treatment with an anti-rabies vaccine.
1886:
Box numbers were introduced in classified advertisements by the Daily Telegraph.
1907:
Brooklands motor racing track near Weybridge, Surrey, was opened. It closed in 1939.
1919:
The British airship R34 became the first to cross the Atlantic, from
Edinburgh to New York, in 108 hours.
1971:
Jazz legend Louis Armstrong (above) died of a heart attack. He once said: “Musicians don’t retire, they stop when there’s no more music in them.”
1988:
167 men died in an explosion on the Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR:
Alaskans more used to wearing jackets in the summer swapped them for sunscreen and parasols amid an unusual prolonged heatwave, it was reported.
BIRTHDAYS:
The Dalai Lama, 85; Dame Mary Peters, (below) former Olympic pentathlon champion, 81; George W Bush, former US president, 74; Sylvester Stallone, actor, 74; Geraldine James, actress, 70; Geoffrey Rush, actor, 69; Jennifer Saunders, actress/comedian, 62; 50 Cent, rapper, 45; Kate Nash, singer-songwriter, 33.