ON THIS DAY

■ AD 68: Rome’s Emperor Nero committed suicide, aged 32, after the Senate had declared him a public enemy.

■ 1549: The Church of England adopted The Book of Common Prayer compiled by Thomas Cranmer.

■ 1836: Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, physician, was born in London. She was the first woman doctor to qualify in Britain, and opened St Mary’s dispensary for women and children in Seymour Place.

■ 1870: Charles Dickens died in Gad’s Hill Place, near Rochester, Kent, after a brain haemorrhage the previous evening. He left only six of the planned 12 parts of his final novel, The Mystery Of Edwin Drood, completed.

■ 1898: Hong Kong was leased to Britain from China for 99 years.

■ 1904: The London Symphony Orchestra was formed by musicians who had left Henry Wood’s orchestra after a disagreement.

■ 1934: Donald Duck was born - in Walt Disney’s cartoon The Wise Little Hen.

■ 1959: America launched the first ballistic missile submarine, the George Washington.

■ 1975: Live radio broadcasting from the House of Commons began.

■ 1991: The £100m, two-mile, fourlane Dartford Bridge in east London was completed.

■ ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: New figures suggested care workers had suffered more than 6,000 violent attacks resulting in serious injuries in the last five years across the UK.

■ BIRTHDAYS: Charles Saatchi, advertising executive, 77; David Troughton, actor, 70; Patricia Cornwell, writer, 64; Michael J Fox, actor, 59; Johnny Depp, actor, 57; Gloria Reuben, actress, 56; Natalie Portman, actress, 39.