ON THIS DAY
1535: Sir Thomas More, English statesman and Lord Chancellor, was executed on Tower Hill for refusing to accept Henry VIII as head of the Church of England.
1685: The Battle of Sedgemoor in Somerset - the last on English soil - took place with victory for James II’s Royalist forces over the rebels under the Duke of Monmouth.
1875: The first cliff railway, opened in Scarborough.
1885: Louis Pasteur administered his first successful treatment with an anti-rabies vaccine.
1886: Box numbers were introduced in classified advertisements by the Daily Telegraph.
1907: Brooklands motor racing track near Weybridge, Surrey, was opened. It closed in 1939.
1919: The British airship R34 became the first to cross the Atlantic, from Edinburgh to New York in 108 hours.
1971: Jazz legend Louis Armstrong died of a heart attack. He once said: “Musicians don’t retire, they stop when there’s no more music in them.”
1988: 167 men died in an explosion on the Piper Alpha oil rig in the North Sea.
BIRTHDAYS: The Dalai Lama, 83; Dame Mary Peters, former Olympic pentathlon champion, 79; George W Bush, former US president, 72; Sylvester Stallone, actor, 72; Geoffrey Rush, actor, 67; Jennifer Saunders, actress/comedian, 60; Kate Nash, singer-songwriter, 31.