On this day

1520: Montezuma II, the last Aztec ruler, was killed in Mexico City during the Spanish conquest of Mexico under Hernan Cortez. 1800: The Glasgow Police Act, the first such act in Britain, was finally passed through the persistence of Glasgow city authorities. This allowed the formation of the City of Glasgow Police.

1837: A British act of parliament abolished punishment by pillory.

1859: The great tightrope walker Charles Blondin crossed Niagara Falls from the US to Canada in just eight minutes. The rope was stretched 1,100ft (335m) and suspended 160ft (49m) above the Falls.

1894: London’s Tower Bridge was officially opened to traffic by the Prince of Wales.

1934: Adolf Hitler’s rival Ernst Rohm and hundreds of influential Nazis were murdered by the SS in what was dubbed “The Night of the Long Knives”.

1936: Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With The Wind was published.

1940: German forces occupied the Channel Islands. 1960: Norman Bates was unleashed on to an unsuspecting world when Alfred Hitchcock’s classic chiller Psycho was premiered in New York.

1974: Soviet-born ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov defected while on tour in Canada with the Bolshoi Ballet. ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: The battle for the Conservative Party leadership was dramatically transformed after Boris Johnson announced he would not stand in the race to succeed David Cameron.