ON THIS DAY

1791: The first performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute took place in Vienna.

1888: Jack the Ripper butchered two more women – Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Stride, found behind 40 Berner Street, and Catherine ‘Kate’ Eddowes, in Mitre Square, both in London.

1935: George Gershwin’s Porgy And Bess was premiered in Boston. 1936: Pinewood Studios opened near Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, to provide Britain with a film studio to compete with Hollywood.

1938: On his return from Germany, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain told a crowd at Heston Airport, Middlesex: “I believe it is peace for our time”, and waved the agreement he had signed with Hitler.

1939: Identity cards were issued in Britain.

1955: James Dean, eccentric young star of Rebel Without A Cause, Giant and East Of Eden, died in a car crash, aged 24.

1967: BBC’s Radio 1 went on air for the first time, with Tony Blackburn introducing The Breakfast Show. His first record was Flowers In The Rain by The Move.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Scientists warned that the rate of ice loss in Greenland was on course to be “greater than anything we’ve seen” in the past 12,000 years unless emissions were cut drastically.