ON THIS DaY

■ ■1701: Yale College in the United States received its charter.

■ ■1804: Hobart, Tasmania, was founded.

■ ■1888: The 555ft white marble Washington Monument, designed by Robert Mills, was opened.

■1905: Sarah Bernhardt had the accident which was to blight her career. Playing Floria in Tosca, she had to jump from a parapet. Stagehands forgot the mattresses for her to land on, and she fell heavily on her right knee. Her leg was later amputated.

■1940: Beatle John Lennon was born during an air raid in Liverpool.

■1962: Uganda became independent.

■ ■1967: Revolutionary leader Che Guevara was captured in Bolivia and shot.

■1974: German businessman Oskar Schindler, credited with saving 1,200 Jews from the Holocaust, died at the age of 66.

■ ■1990: Hundreds of Chinese people queued to buy Big Macs when McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in Shenzhen.

■2009: US president Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.

■ ■ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: A humpback whale which swam into the Thames was hit by a ship.

■ ■BIRTHDAYS: The Duke of Kent, 85; Brian Blessed, actor, 84, above; John Pilger, investigative journalist and film-maker, 81; Steve Ovett, former athlete, 65; David Cameron, Former Prime Minister/leader of the Conservative Party, 54; PJ Harvey, rock singer, 51; Sean Lennon, singer, 45; Mark Viduka, former footballer, 45; Nicky Byrne, pop star (Westlife), 42; Chris O’Dowd, actor, 41.

The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2016 was 62.8%