ON THIS DAY

● 1912: WilliamBooth,English social reformer, evangelist and founder of the Salvation Army, died aged 83.

● 1913: Adolphe Pegond baled out from a Bleriot airplane 700 feet above Buc in France. His parachute brought him down safely, making him the first to parachute from a plane.

● 1924: BritishsprinterEric Liddell refused to run in the heat of the 100m at the Paris Olympics because it fell on a Sunday and was against his religious convictions.

● 1968: Russia sent tanks into Czechoslovakia.

● 1977: The Voyager I spacecraft was launched on its journey via Jupiter and Saturn to become the first man-made object to leave the Solar System.

● 1989: The Thames pleasure cruiser Marchioness was hit by a dredger and 51 young people attending a party were killed.

● 1989: George Adamson, Britishnaturalistand conservationist, best known for his work with his wife Joy and the lioness Elsa, was murdered by bandits in a game park in Kenya.

● 2009: Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was allowed to return to Tripoli on compassionate grounds as he had been diagnosed with cancer and given three months to live. He was serving a life sentence for the murder of 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988.

● ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: The clear-up began after major floods in southern India.

● AUGUST 20 BIRTHDAYS: Sylvester McCoy, actor, 76; Robert Plant, rock singer, 71; Steve McMahon, former footballer, 58; Joe Pasquale, comedian, 58.