On this day

Thomas Cromwell, chancellor to Henry VIII, was beheaded on Tower Hill for promoting the king’s failed marriage to Anne of Cleves.

1540:

The first potatoes arrived in Britain in Plymouth, brought from Colombia by Sir Thomas Harriott. Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer, died of a stroke. Doctor Edward Pritchard was hanged in Glasgow for poisoning his mother-in-law and his wife. It was the last public hanging in Scotland.

1586: 1750: 1865: 1959:

Postcodes were introduced into Britain by the Postmaster General together with new postal sorting machines.

1976:

One of the greatest natural disasters of recent centuries occurred when an earthquake hit Tangshan in China, killing three-quarters of a million people.