On this day

522: Darius I killed the Magian usurper Gaumata, securing his hold as king of the Persian Empire.

1066: William the Conqueror landed in Pevensey, Sussex.

1399: The first British monarch to abdicate, Richard II, was replaced by Henry Bolingbroke to whom he had surrendered without a fight.

1758: Horatio Nelson, hero of Trafalgar and Britain’s greatest sailor, was born at Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk.

1829: London’s first official police force was mobilised and its men nicknamed “Bobbies” or “Peelers” after Sir Robert Peel, the home secretary who founded it.

1899: Holiday camp pioneer Sir Billy Butlin was born.

1930: George Bernard Shaw turned down a peerage.

1938: The Munich Pact, an agreement between Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy, was signed, under which the Sudeten land was surrendered to Nazi Germany.

1941: A Nazi death squad murdered 30,000 Russian Jews in Kiev.

1952: British and world water-speed record holder John Cobb was killed on Loch Ness when his vessel Crusader disintegrated after hitting-waves at 240mph.

1983: A Chorus Line broke the record as the longestrunning Broadway show with its 3,389th performance since July 25, 1975.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Jeremy Corbyn used his first conference speech as Labour leader to send a message to voters: “You don’t have to take what you are given”.