On this DAY

1307: William Tell is reputed to have shot the apple off his son’s head.

1558: Mary I, ‘Bloody Mary’, died and was succeeded by Elizabeth I.

1796: Catherine the Great of Russia died of a stroke, aged 67.

1882: The Royal Astronomer witnessed an Unidentified Flying Object from the Greenwich Royal Observatory. It was described as a “strange celestial visitor – a circular object glowing green”.

1887: Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (Monty), who led the Eighth Army to victory in North Africa in the Second World War, was born in London.

1955: Anglesey became the first authority in Britain to introduce fluoride into its water supply.

1959: Two Scottish airports, Prestwick and Renfrew, became the first to offer duty-free goods in Britain.

1988: Franz Kafka’s manuscript of his classic novel The Trial (1925) was sold at Sotheby’s in London for £1 million, a world record for a modern literary text. Kafka had died in poverty the year before.

2009: The unfinished novel The Original Of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov was published 32 years after his death despite him asking in his will for the manuscript to be burned.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: A British military dog who protected troops by sniffing out explosives and insurgent fighters in Afghanistan received the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross.