On this day ...

JANUARY 3

1777: George Washington defeated the British at the Battle of Princeton.

1870: Work on the Brooklyn Bridge began.

1883: Clement Attlee, Labour Party leader and prime minister from 1945-51, was born.

1892: Author JRR Tolkien, creator of The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit, was born in South Africa.

1924: English explorer Howard Carter discovered the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in Egypt’s Valley of Kings.

1946: Nazi propagandist William Joyce - the notorious Lord Haw-Haw – was hanged for treason.

1959: Alaska became the 49th state of America.

1961: The millionth Morris Minor, the highly successful British car designed by Sir Alec Issigonis, came off the assembly line at Oxford.

1997: The death toll in Europe’s big freeze hit 220 as temperatures plunged to -10C from Britain to central Russia.

2009: Matt Smith, above, was named as the new Doctor Who. He became the 11th Time Lord since the programme started in 1963.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR:

The first polar bear cub born in the UK for 25 years was being monitored at a Scottish wildlife park. BIRTHDAYS: Stephen Stills, rock singer, 74; John Paul Jones, rock musician (Led Zeppelin), 73; Mel Gibson, above, actor, 63; Gavin Hastings, rugby great, 57; Michael Schumacher, ex-F1 driver, 50; Dominic Wood, children’s TV presenter, 41.