ON THIS DAY

■ ■1492: Christopher Columbus sighted his first land in discovering the New World, calling it San Salvador.

■ ■1537: Edward VI, son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, was born. He succeeded his father when he was nine, but died at 15.

■ ■1609: Three Blind Mice was published in London, believed to be the earliest printed secular song.

■ ■1866: Ramsay MacDonald was born. In 1924 he became Britain’s first Labour Prime Minister.

■ ■1872: Composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in Down Ampney, Gloucestershire.

■ ■1875: Modern-day Satanist Aleister Crowley – once dubbed “the wickedest man in the world” – was born in Leamington, Warwickshire.

■ ■1899: Mafeking was besieged by the Boers and was gallantly defended by Baden-Powell, until relieved 217 days later.

■ ■1901: President Theodore Roosevelt renamed the Executive Mansion ‘the White House’.

■ ■1915: British nurse Edith Cavell was executed as a spy by German firing squad.

■ ■1984: Five people died, and 34 were injured, in an IRA bomb attack on the Grand Hotel in Brighton, above, where the Conservative Party conference was being held.

■ ■2002: Bomb attacks on two nightclubs in Bali killed 202 people.

■ ■2007: Former US vice president Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

■ ■2009: Edgar Allan Poe received a funeral in Baltimore, USA, 160 years after his death.

■ ■BIRTHDAYS: Angela Rippon, broadcaster, 76; Robin Askwith, actor, 70; David Threlfall, actor, 67; Hugh Jackman, actor, 52; Stephen Lee, former snooker player, 46; Josh Hutcherson, actor, 28.

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