ON THIS DaY

NATIONAL DAY OF MALAWI

■■1535: Sir Thomas More, English statesman and Lord Chancellor, was executed on Tower Hill for refusing to accept Henry VIII as head of the Church of England.

■■1685: The Battle of Sedgemoor in Somerset – the last on English soil – took place with victory for James II’s Royalist forces over the rebels under the Duke of Monmouth.

■■1875: South Cliff Tramway, the first cliff railway, opened in Scarborough.

■■1885: Louis Pasteur administered his first successful treatment with an anti-rabies vaccine.

■■1886: Box numbers were introduced in classified advertisements by the Daily Telegraph.

■■1907: Brooklands motor racing track near Weybridge, Surrey, was opened. It closed in 1939.

■■1919: The British airship R34 became the first to cross the Atlantic, from Edinburgh to New York in 108 hours.

■■1971: Jazz legend Louis Armstrong died of a heart attack. He once said: “Musicians don’t retire, they stop when there’s no more music in them.”

■■1988: 167 men died in an explosion on the Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea.

■■ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Alaskans more used to wearing jackets in the summer swapped them for sunscreen and parasols amid an unusual prolonged heatwave, it was reported.

■■BIRTHDAYS: The Dalai Lama, 85; Dame Mary Peters, former Olympic pentathlon champion, 81; George W Bush, former US president, 74; Sylvester Stallone, actor, 74; Geraldine James, actress, 70; Geoffrey Rush, actor, 69; Jennifer Saunders, actress/comedian, 62; 50 Cent, rapper, 45; Kate Nash, singersongwriter, 33.

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