May 6 in History

1833 — John Deere makes his first steel plough. 1851 — Linus Yale jnr patents his Yale lock. 1856 — Sigmund Freud, neurologist and father of psychoanalysis, is born in Freiberg, Austrian Empire.

1868 — Gaston Leroux, novelist (“Le Fantôme de l’Opéra” – “The Phantom of the Opera”), is born in Paris.

1913 — Stewart Granger, actor, is born in London. 1915 — Orson Welles, actor, director, is born in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

1937 — At 7.25pm the LZ 129 Hindenburg airship bursts into flames and crashes to the ground as it attempts to land at Lakehurst Naval Air Station, New Jersey. Thirteen of the 36 passengers, 22 of the 61 crew and one member of the ground crew die when the zeppelin is destroyed in 34 seconds. 1950 — Elizabeth Taylor, 18, marries her first husband, Conrad Hilton jnr, 23, heir to the Hilton Hotels chain. They are divorced in January 1951. 1952 — Maria Montessori, 61, Italian physician, educationist, dies in the Netherlands. She opened her first school in San Lorenzo, Italy, in 1907.

1954 — Medical student Roger Bannister, 25, breaks the four-minute-mile barrier during a track meet in Oxford, England, finishing in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj has held the world record, 3:43.13, since 1999.

1960 — Britain’s Princess Margaret, 29, marries photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon), 30, at Westminster Abbey.

1961 — George Clooney, actor, is born in Lexington, Kentucky.

1970 — Yuichiro Miura, 37, Japanese alpinist, becomes the first person to ski on Mount Everest — 2 000m in two minutes 20 seconds. In 1975 “The Man Who Skied Down Everest” becomes the first sports film to win an Oscar for best documentary. In 2003, at 70, Miura becomes the oldest person to reach the summit of Everest. He has heart surgeries for cardiac arrhythmia in 2006 and 2007. On May 23 2013 Miura, 80, again becomes the oldest person to climb to the summit … and plans to do so again at 90.

1978 — At 12.34pm, the numbers 12345678 represent the time and date: 12.34 5/6/78. The sequence will next occur in 2078.

2008 — Voting on Myanmar’s new constitution is postponed in areas hardest hit by cyclone

Nargis as the death toll soars above 22 500. Nargis made landfall on May 2, sending a storm surge 40km up the densely populated Irrawaddy delta. The final death toll is estimated at 138 366, the fifth-deadliest tropical cyclone on record.