ON THIS DAY
1648:
The Treaty of Westphalia was signed, ending the Thirty Years’ War.
1857:
The first football club, Sheffield FC, was formed by a group of Harrow old boys meeting in Sheffield.
1882:
Actress Dame Sybil Thorndike was born in Gainsborough, Lincs.
1924:
A letter purporting to be from Grigori Zinoviev of the USSR calling for socialists to start a revolution was leaked to the British press on the eve of a general election. The letter, later denounced as a forgery, helped give the Tories a huge victory.
1931:
Al Capone’s gangster career ended when he was sentenced to 11 years for tax evasion. He was released in 1939 and died in 1947.
1945:
The United Nations Charter came into force.
1948:
Franz Lehar, Hungarian composer of operettas including The Merry Widow, died in Vienna aged 78.
1964:
Northern Rhodesia became the Republic of Zambia.
1969:
Richard Burton bought his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, a 69.42 carat diamond, costing more than a million dollars.
1989:
US television preacher Jim Bakker was given a 45-year jail sentence and fined 500,000 US dollars for swindling his followers of millions of dollars.