NOW & THEN
6 JUNE
1520: King Henry VIII and France’s King Francis I signed treaty ending French interference in Scotland.
1660: Peace of Copenhagen ended war between Sweden and Denmark, opening the Baltic to foreign warships.
1683: First museum opened to the public – the Ashmolean Museum in Broad Street, Oxford, founded by Elias Ashmole.
1727: James Figg defeated Ned Sutton in London, in the first boxing title fight.
1871: Alsace was annexed to Germany after French army was defeated in Franco-prussian War. 1921: Southwark Bridge across Thames in London opened. 1923: Steve Donoghue, riding Papyrus, became the first jockey to win the Derby three times in succession.
1936: Gatwick Airport was opened. 1942: The three-day Battle of Midway Island ended with a United States victory. It was the turning point in the Pacific campaign.
1944: The allied landings began on the coast of Normandy. Operation Overlord was the biggest sea-borne invasion in history.
1953: Gordon Richards won his first Derby on Pinza, at odds of 5-1. It was his 28th ride in the classic.
1954: The Eurovision television link-up was inaugurated.
1967: Egyptians closed Suez Canal during Arab-israeli War.
1972: Coal mine explosion in Rhodesia killed 431 workers.
1981: At least 800 died when an Indian Railways train plunged into the Bagmati River in Bihar.
1984: 250 Sikh militants and 47 Indian army troops were killed in fighting inside historic Golden Temple complex in Amritsar.
1988: The Queen stripped imprisoned jockey Lester Piggott of his OBE.
1989: Ethnic tensions mounted in Soviet Uzbekistan, where a riot started by marketplace disagreement took 50 lives.
1989: Ayatollah Khomeini buried. Thousands of mourners flocked round, tipping the body on to the street and fighting over shreds of his shroud.
1990: United States secretary of state James Baker presented Soviet proposal on Germany’s military future to Nato allies.
1991: Britain rejected offers from Colonel Gaddafi to restore diplomatic links between Britain and Libya.
1992: A book about the Princess of Wales, by Andrew Morton, claimed she had attempted suicide five times.
1994: West Indian Brian Lara became the first batsman to pass 500 runs in a single firstclass innings when he hit 501 not out against Durham for Warwickshire.
2002: A near-earth asteroid exploded over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Libya. The resulting explosion was estimated to have a force of 26 kilotons, slightly more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb.
2005: The United States Supreme Court upheld a federal law banning cannabis, including medical marijuana.
2007: President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was stripped of his honorary degree by Edinburgh University senate.
BIRTHDAYS
Sara Banerji, British writer, artist and sculptor, 87; Sandra Bernhard, American comedienne, 64; Baron Blunkett, home secretary 2001-04, 72; Björn Borg, Wimbledon tennis champion, 63; Robert Englund, American actor (Freddy Krueger in the A Nightmare on Elm Street film series), 72; Paul Esswood, British counter-tenor, 77; Mike Gatting OBE, English cricketer and commentator, 62; Josie Lawrence, British comedienne and actress, 60; Willie John Mcbride CBE, Irish rugby player, 79.
ANNIVERSARIES
Births: 1599 Diego Valázquez, painter; 1868 Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Antarctic explorer; 1875 Thomas Mann, German novelist; 1919 Peter Alexander Rupert Carington, 6th Baron Carrington KG, foreign secretary 1979-82; 1936 Levi Stubbs, singer (Four Tops).
Deaths: 1891 Sir John Alexander Macdonald, first prime minister of Canada; 1961 Carl Jung, psychoanalytic pioneer; 1968 Robert Kennedy, US senator and younger brother of the late president John F Kennedy (assassinated); 1976 Paul Getty, oil businessman and reputed at one time to be richest man in world; 2017 Bill Walker, deputy chairman of SNP, MP 1979-97.