ON THIS DAY

■■1772: Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan) was born in Ottery St Mary, Devon.

■■1805: Lord Nelson, English naval hero, was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar – dying at the precise moment the Franco-Spanish fleet surrendered.

■■1833: Alfred Nobel, industrialist, inventor of dynamite and founder of the Nobel Prizes, was born in Stockholm.

■■1858: The Can-Can was first performed in Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld in Paris.

■■1918: The “Spanish flu” epidemic started in Britain, eventually killing approximately twice as many as died in the First World War.

■■1940: Geoffrey Boycott, Yorkshire and England cricketer, was born in Fitzwilliam, West Yorkshire. ■■1950: Chinese forces occupied Tibet.

■■1952: The president of the Kenya African Union, Jomo Kenyatta, was arrested following the declaration of a state of emergency in the British colony of Kenya. ■■1966: Disaster struck the small South Wales mining village of Aberfan, above, when a colliery slag tip slid down the side of a hill and engulfed a row of houses, a farm and a school. Of the 144 people who died, 116 were children.

■■1982: Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness made history by becoming the first members of Sinn Fein to be elected to the Ulster Assembly.

■■ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Sir David Attenborough warned that the pandemic was a threat to the environment, as politicians instead deal with the health and economic crisis ahead of climate change.

■■BIRTHDAYS: Peter (Lord) Mandelson, former European Union trade commissioner, 68; Julian Cope, musician, 64; David Campese, former Australian rugby player, 59; Paul Ince, football manager, 54; Jade Jagger, jewellery designer, 50; Andrew Scott, actor, 45; Kim Kardashian, reality TV star/model, 41.

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