ON THIS DAY

1035: Death of Canute, Danish King of England.

1660: John Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, was jailed for preaching without a licence.

1840: Sculptor Auguste Rodin was born in Paris.

1859: The man who invented the leotard - Jules Leotard - gave the world’s first flying trapeze display in Paris.

1911: The Rev Chad Varah, founder of the Samaritans, was born.

1919: The first flight from England to Australia began from Hounslow with Ross and Keith Smith in a Vickers Vimy. They landed safely on December 10.

1931: Abbey Road recording studio in London was opened by Sir Edward Elgar.

1944: Tirpitz, last of Hitler’s fleet of “unsinkable battleships”, was sunk off the Norwegian coast by Lancaster bombers.

1979: In response to the hostage situation in Tehran, US president Jimmy Carter ordered a halt to all petroleum imports into the United States from Iran.

1990: Crown Prince Akihito was formally installed as Emperor Akihito of Japan, becoming the 125th Japanese monarch.

1997: Ramzi Yousef was found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: The husband of Nazanin ZaghariRatcliffe endured his 20th day on hunger strike, after a meeting with a Foreign Office minister left him feeling “deflated” about his wife’s continued detention in Iran.

BIRTHDAYS: Booker T Jones, soul musician, 78; Neil Young, singer/ songwriter, 77; Kevin Ratcliffe, former footballer, 62; Nadia Comaneci, former gymnast, 61; Mariella Frostrup, TV presenter, 60, above; Tonya Harding, former figure skater, 52; Anne Hathaway, actress, 40.

The recycled paper content of UK newspapers in 2021 was 65.7%