ON THIS DAY

MAY 25

1768: Captain Cook set off on his first voyage, to explore the Antipodes.

1935: American athlete Jesse Owens set six world records within 45 minutes at Ann Arbor in Michigan.

1951: British diplomats Burgess and Maclean were first reported missing – they had defected to Moscow.

1967: Glasgow Celtic became the first British football club to win the European Cup when they beat Inter Milan 2-1 in Lisbon.

1986: Bob Geldof ’s Race Against Time had 30 million people worldwide running for Sport Aid to raise money for the starving in Africa.

MAY 26

673: The Venerable Bede, English historian and scholar, was born in Jarrow. 1805: Napoleon was crowned King of Italy in Milan Cathedral.

1865: The Confederate Army surrendered, ending the American Civil War. 1868: Irish terrorist Michael Barrett was hanged outside Newgate Prison for causing an explosion in London which left 13 dead – the last public execution in England. 1969: John Lennon and Yoko Ono began a ‘bed-in’ for world peace in a Montreal hotel.

MAY 27

1818: Women’s rights campaigner Amelia Jenks Bloomer was born in New York. She caused such a stir by wearing trousers that they acquired her name – bloomers.

1900: Belgium became the first country to elect a government by proportional representation.

1936: The Queen Mary left Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York. 1937: The 4,200ft Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, was opened.

MAY 28

585BC: A timely total eclipse of the sun decided the Battle of Mesopotamia between Medes (now Iran) and Lydia (now Turkey). The blackened sky was read as a sign of God’s anger and an immediate truce was called.

1842: The first public library was opened, in Frederick Street, Salford. 1907: The first Isle of Man motorcycle TT race was held.

1987: Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German, flew his small aircraft through Soviet air space from Helsinki to Moscow, landing in Red Square.

MAY 29

1660: On his 30th birthday, Charles II entered London to be restored as King of England.

1911: Sir William Gilbert, librettist of Gilbert & Sullivan operas, died after rescuing two women from a garden pond. 1942: Bing Crosby recorded the world’s top-selling disc, White Christmas, for the soundtrack of the film Holiday Inn. 1953: Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first two climbers to reach the summit of Everest.