ON THIS DAY

• 1912: Williambooth, english social reformer, evangelist and founder of the Salvation Army, died aged 83.

• 1913: Harry Brearley of Sheffield cast the first stainless steel.

• 1913: Adolphe Pegond baled out from a Bleriot airplane 700 feet above Buc in France. His parachute brought him down safely, making him the first to parachute from a plane.

• 1924: British sprinter Eric Liddell refused to run in the heat of the 100m at the Paris Olympics because it fell on a Sunday and was against his religious convictions. He had been tipped as the likely winner.

• 1968: Russia sent tanks into Czechoslovakia to suppress attempts to introduce reforms and put down protests.

• 1989: The Thames pleasure cruiser Marchioness was hit by a dredger and 51 young people attending a party on the boat were killed.

• 1989: George Adamson, British conservationist, best known for his work with his wife Joy and the lioness Elsa, was murdered by bandits in a game park in Kenya.

• 2009: Libyan Abdelbaset al-megrahi was allowed to return to Tripoli on compassionate grounds as he had been diagnosed with cancer and given three months to live. He was serving a life sentence for the murder of 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988 over Lockerbie.

• BIRTHDAYS: Sylvester Mccoy, actor, 77; Robert Plant, rock singer, 72; Steve Mcmahon, former footballer, 59; Joe Pasquale, comedian, 59; Scott Quinnell, former rugby player, 48; Jamie Cullum, singer, 41.