Today in history

1406 - King Robert III of Scotland dies and is succeeded by James I, who was being held prisoner by the English.

1611 - Denmark’s King Christian IV declares war on Sweden.

1905 - An earthquake strikes the province of Lahore, then part of India, killing 19,000 people.

1932 - United States researcher Professor CG King of Pittsburgh isolates vitamin C for the first time.

1958 - Cheryl Crane, 14, daughter of actress Lana Turner, stabs to death organised crime figure Johnny Stompanato, her mother’s boyfriend, in self-defence. The crime was later ruled a ‘‘justifiable homicide’’.

1964 - The Beatles set a record by having all of the top five US singles at the same time.

1968 - US civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

1975 - Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

1988 - Iran hammers Iraq’s vital oil centres with missiles and fighter bombers.

1998 - The environment ministers of the world’s eight top industrialised nations announce new efforts to curb smuggling of hazardous waste, endangered species and substances that damage the Earth’s ozone layer.

2001 - Sudan’s defence minister and 14 other military officials are killed when their plane crashes on takeoff.

2003 - US forces seize control of Baghdad’s Saddam International Airport and rename it Baghdad International.

2006 - Women make history in Kuwait by voting and running for office for the first time in a local byelection.

2009 - Metallica, RUN-DMC and Eminem are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

2011 - A diplomatic push by Muammar Gaddafi’s regime runs into trouble as opponents at home and abroad reject any solution to the Libyan conflict involving one of his sons taking power.

2015 - Pope Francis, referring to Al-shabab’s massacre of almost 150 people at a Kenyan university, condemns the indifference and ‘‘complicit silence’’ to jihadist attacks on Christians.

2016 - Heads of state, criminals and celebrities are named in the leak of 11.5 billion documents belonging to Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in setting up companies in offshore tax havens.

Georg von Trapp, Austrian submarine commander (1880-1947); Maya Angelou, US poet (1928-2014); Jonathan Agnew, English cricket broadcaster (1960-); Graham Norton, Irish talk-show host (1963-); Robert Downey Jr, US actor (1965-); Heath Ledger, Australian actor (1979-2008).