ON THIS DAY
1859:
The world’s first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, by Edwin
Drake.
1883: Krakatoa, a volcanic island in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java, erupted with thousands killed by the resulting tidal waves.
1899:
CS Forester, English novelist, was born in Cairo. He published The African Queen in 1935 and two years later created a series of historical novels his most popular character, Captain Horatio Hornblower.
1912:
Tarzan Of The Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, first went into print as a magazine serial.
1966:
Francis Chichester left Plymouth in Gipsy Moth IV on his single-handed voyage around the world.
1967:
The man who helped make The Beatles, Brian Epstein, died in his London home from an overdose of sleeping pills.
1975:
The last descendant of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, died, aged 83.
1979:
Earl Mountbatten, the Queen’s cousin, was killed when the IRA exploded a remote-controlled 50lb bomb on his boat Shadow V off the coast of County Sligo, Ireland.
1991:
EC members recognised the independence of the Baltic states.
2009:
English youth Michael Perham, aged 17 years, five months, became the youngest person to complete a solo circumnavigation of the world by sailboat, breaking the previous record by two months.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR:
A man who suffered a double-level amputation after catching his hand in an electric saw had it saved by surgeons following 17 hours of surgery.
BIRTHDAYS:
Tuesday Weld, actress, 77; Barbara Bach, actress, 73; John Lloyd, former tennis player, 66; Glen Matlock, rock musician, 64; Bernhard Langer, golfer, 63; Gerhard Berger, former motor racing driver, 61; Siobhan Redmond, actress, 61; Jeanette Winterson, writer, 61; Denise Lewis, Olympic heptathlon gold medallist, 48; Dietmar Hamann, footballer 47; Aaron Paul, actor, 41.