ON THIS DAY
1912:
William Booth, English social reformer, evangelist and founder of the Salvation Army, died aged 83.
Harry Brearley of Sheffield cast the first stainless steel.
Adolphe Pegond baled out from a Bleriot airplane 700ft above Buc in France. His parachute brought him down safely, making him the first to parachute from a plane.
1913: 1913: 1924:
British sprinter Eric Liddell refused to run in the heat of the 100m at the Paris Olympics because it fell on a Sunday and was against his religious convictions. He had been tipped as the likely winner.
Calder Hall, in Cumbria, the world’s first large-scale atomic power station, began generating.
Russia sent tanks into Czechoslovakia.
The Voyager I spacecraft was launched on its journey via Jupiter and Saturn to become the first man-made object to leave the Solar System.
The Thames pleasure cruiser Marchioness was hit by a dredger and 51 young people attending a party on the boat were killed.
George Adamson, British
1956: 1968: 1977: 1989: 1989: 2009:
Sylvester McCoy and Scott Quinnell
naturalist and conservationist, best known for his work with his wife Joy and the lioness Elsa, was murdered by bandits in a game park in Kenya.
Libyan Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was allowed to return to Tripoli on compassionate grounds as he had been diagnosed with cancer and given three months to live. He was serving a life sentence for the murder of 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR:
More than two-thirds of Britain’s biggest businesses admitted staff lacked training to deal with the growing threat of cyber attacks, research revealed.
BIRTHDAYS:
Sylvester McCoy, actor, 75; Robert Plant, rock singer, 70; Steve McMahon, former footballer, 57; Joe Pasquale, comedian, 57; Scott Quinnell, former rugby player, 46; Jamie Cullum, singer, 39; Andrew Garfield, actor, 35.