ON THIS DAY

• 1478: George, Duke of Clarence, was murdered in the Tower of London. According to legend, he drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine.

• 1516: Mary I, Queen of England (1553-1558), daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, was born in Greenwich.

• 1546: Martin Luther, father of the Reformation, died in Eisleben, Germany, aged 62 – supposedly of overwork.

• 1564: The great Renaissance artist and sculptor Michelangelo died in Rome, aged 88.

• 1678: John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress was published.

• 1745: Count Alessandro Volta, physicist who devised the first battery, was born in Como, Italy.

• 1911: More than 6,000 letters and postcards were flown five miles from Allahabad to Naini

Junction in India by Henri Picquet – the first official airmail.

• 1915: Germany’s blockade of Britain by submarine began.

• 1930: American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered the planet Pluto from a series of pictures taken the previous month at Lowell Observatory.

• 2005: Fox hunting became illegal in England and Wales. The Hunting Act outlawed hunting with dogs.

• ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Wallace Smith Broecker, a scientist who raised early alarms about climate change and popularised the term “global warming”, died aged 87.

• BIRTHDAYS: Yoko Ono, artist/singer,87;graemegarden, actor, comedian and presenter, 77; Michael Buerk, broadcaster, 74; Sinead Cusack, actress, 72; Cybill Shepherd, actress; 70.