ON THIS DaY

■1772: Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan) was born in Ottery St Mary, Devon.

■1805: Lord Nelson, English naval hero, was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar – dying at the precise moment the Franco-Spanish fleet surrendered.

■1833: Alfred Nobel, industrialist, inventor of dynamite and founder of the Nobel Prizes, was born in Stockholm.

■1858: The Can-Can was first performed in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld in Paris.

■ ■1918: The “Spanish flu” epidemic started in Britain, eventually killing approximately twice as many as died in the First World War.

■ ■1940: Geoffrey Boycott, Yorkshire and England cricketer, was born in Fitzwilliam, West Yorkshire.

■1950: Chinese forces occupied Tibet.

■ ■1952: The President of the Kenya African Union, Jomo Kenyatta, was arrested following the declaration of a state of emergency in the British colony of Kenya.

■1966: Disaster struck the small Welsh mining village of Aberfan when a colliery slag tip slid down the side of a hill and engulfed a row of houses, a farm and a school. Of the 144 people who died, 116 were children.

■1982: Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness made history by becoming the first members of Sinn Fein to be elected to the Ulster Assembly.

■ ■ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: An American Airlines passenger jet flying from Heathrow to Philadelphia was diverted to Dublin “due to an odour caused by a spilled cleaning solution in the galley”.

■BIRTHDAYS: Peter (Lord) Mandelson, former European Union trade commissioner, 67; Julian Cope, musician, 63; David Campese, former Australian rugby player, 58; Paul Ince, football manager, 53; Jade Jagger, jewellery designer, 49, above; Andrew Scott, actor, 44; Kim Kardashian, reality TV star/model, 40.

The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2016 was 62.8%