ON THIS DAY

● 1837: London’sfirstrailway station, Euston, opened.

● 1871: The English Football Association Challenge Cup Competition was formed, to become better known as the FA Cup. The first final saw the Wanderers beat the Royal Engineers by one goal to nil, watched by a crowd of 2,000.

● 1885: The original vamp, Theda Bara, was born in Cincinnati. She stunned audiences in her 1915 debut movie A Fool There Was, which was inspired by Kipling’s poem The Vampire – hence the expression.

● 1940: The first singles charts were published in the US journal Billboard. No 1 was I’ll Never Smile Again by the Tommy Dorsey band, vocal by Frank Sinatra.

● 1944: An assassination attempt on Hitler was made by a German staff officer, Count Claus

Schenk von Stauffenberg, at Rastenberg, East Prussia. He was summarily executed, as were 1,000 other people implicated in the plot.

● 1968: Actress Jane Asher broke off her engagement with Paul McCartney in a BBC television interview.

● 1969: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” said Neil Armstrong when he emerged from the Eagle lunar module to take man’s first step on the moon.

● 1973: Kung-fu film star Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong.

● ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: An explosion at a gas factory in central China left multiple people dead.

● BIRTHDAYS: Jacques Delors, European politician, 95; Dame Diana Rigg, actress, 82; Carlos Santana, rock musician, 73; Anton du Beke, dancer, 54.