ON THIS DAY
1777: George Washington defeated the British at the Battle of Princeton. 1870: Work on the Brooklyn Bridge began. 1883: Clement Attlee, Labour Party leader and prime minister from 1945-51, was born. 1892: Author JRR Tolkien, creator of The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit, was born in South Africa. He died in Bournemouth in 1973. 1911: The Siege of Sidney Street took place when anarchists were besieged by police in a house in London’s East End. 1924: Explorer Howard Carter discovered the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in Egypt’s Valley of Kings. 1946: Nazi propagandist William Joyce - the notorious Lord Haw-Haw - was hanged for treason. 1959: Alaska became the 49th state of America. 1961: The millionth Morris Minor, the highly successful British car designed by Sir Alec Issigonis, came off the assembly line at Oxford. 1997: The death toll in Europe’s big freeze hit 220 as temperatures plunged to -10C from Britain to central Russia. 2009: Matt Smith was named as the new Doctor Who. He became the 11th Time Lord since the programme started in 1963. ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: A mother who was able to have an IVF baby thanks to a donation from the late singer George Michael said she “cannot thank him enough”. BIRTHDAYS: Stephen Stills, rock singer, 73; John Paul Jones, rock musician (Led Zeppelin), 72; Mel Gibson, actor, 62; Gavin Hastings, rugby great, 56; Michael Schumacher, former racing driver, 49; Dominic Wood, children’s television presenter, 40.