ON THIS DAY

■ 1851: Melvil Dewey, who devised the library cataloguing system which bears his name, was born in New York.

■ 1868: London’s first traffic lights were installed in Westminster, to help MPs get to the House of Commons.

■ 1868: Whitaker’s Almanack was published for the first time.

■ 1869: Wyoming became the first American territory to grant women the vote.

■ 1896: Alfred Bernhard Nobel, Swedish chemist and industrialist who invented dynamite, died. On this day in 1901 the first Nobel Prizes were awarded.

■ 1907: Rudyard Kipling, above, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the first time it had been awarded to an English writer.

■ 1936: Edward VIII signed the Instrument of Abdication. He choose his love of American divorcee Wallis Simpson over his royal duty.

■ 2011: The Sun, Earth and Moon fell almost exactly in line.

■ ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: A Banksy-style mural depicting an elderly woman sneezing and spitting out her dentures appeared on the side of a house in Bristol.

■ BIRTHDAYS: Clive Anderson, television presenter, 69; Susan Dey, actress, 69; Kenneth Branagh, actor/director, 61, above; Brian Molko, singer/songwriter, 49; Meg White, drummer (The White Stripes), 47; Patrick Flueger, actor, 38; Xavier Samuel, actor, 38.