ON THIS DAY
868:
St Edmund, Saxon king of East Anglia, was martyred by the Vikings, who tied him to a tree, shot at him with arrows, then beheaded him. He was enshrined at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
1789:
New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
1818:
Simon Bolivar declared Venezuela independent of Spain.
1906:
Charles Rolls and Henry Royce collaborated to form the car company, Rolls-Royce Ltd. On the same day in 1931, the company bought Bentley Motors.
1944:
After five years of blackout, the lights were switched on again in Piccadilly, Strand and Fleet Street.
1945:
The Nuremberg War Crimes trial of Nazis, including Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, began. It lasted 218 days.
1947:
Princess Elizabeth married Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten. It was the most glamorous royal occasion since before the war and the BBC covered it in 42 different languages.
1951:
Snowdonia in Wales was designated a National Park.
1975:
General Franco, dictator of Spain for 36 years, died aged 82.
1979:
Anthony Blunt, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, was stripped of his knighthood after being exposed as the Fourth Man in the Burgess, Maclean and Philby spy scandal.