ON THIS DAY
■■1265: The Battle of Evesham took place, in which Simon de Montfort was defeated and killed by Royalist forces, led by the future King Edward I.
■■ 1792: Percy Bysshe Shelley, romantic poet, was born near Horsham, Sussex. After his death from drowning in Italy at 29, his wife kept his heart in her desk until she died.
■■1875: Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish writer most famous for his fairy stories, died.
■■1914: Great Britain declared war on Germany for violating the Treaty of London - and the First World War began. President Wilson proclaimed the USA neutral.
■■1917: Captain Noel Chavasse, of the Royal Army Medical Corps, the second of only three men to be awarded the Victoria Cross twice, died from his war wounds.
■■1978: Jeremy Thorpe, a former leader of the Liberal Party, was charged with conspiracy to murder Mr Norman Scott. He was later cleared.
■■1991: Greek cruise ship the MTS Oceanos sank off the coast of South Africa’s Wild Coast. All 571 passengers and crew members were saved.
■■2006: 17 members of Action Against Hunger / ACF-USA were executed while carrying out humanitarian programs in Muthur, Sri Lanka.
■■2007: NASA’s Phoenix Spaceship was launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to find out whether Mars could have once supported life.
■■2011: Mark Duggan, 29, was shot by police attempting to arrest him in Tottenham, London.
■■ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: A Cambridge scientist warned that the “decaying” of the Greenland ice sheet risked pushing up the sea level and threatens coastal cities around the world.
■■BIRTHDAYS: Jack Cunningham, Labour politician, 81; Martin Jarvis, actor, 79; Georgina Hale, actress, 77; Billy Bob Thornton, actor, 65; Ian Broudie, musician/producer (Lightning Seeds), 62; Mary Decker, former track athlete, 62; Bernard Rose, director, 60; Barack Obama, former president of the United States, 62; Lee Mack, comedian, 52; Greta Gerwig, actress, 37.
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