ON THIS DAY

1547:

• Coronation of nine-yearold Edward VI, only son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour.

1653:

• Admiral Robert Blake defeated the Dutch fleet under van Tromp off Portsmouth.

1938:

• Anthony Eden resigned as British Foreign Secretary in protest over prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy towards the Nazis.

1947:

• Lord Louis Mountbatten, uncle of Prince Philip, was appointed the last Viceroy of India - the same day the government announced the British would leave India by June 1948. Lord Mountbatten was killed by the IRA when a bomb detonated on his boat in County Sligo, Ireland, in 1979.

1962:

• Astronaut John Glenn became the first American in orbit when he circled the Earth three times in the Mercury capsule Friendship 7.

1978:

• A judge indicted Isabel Per on, ex-president of Argentina, for fraudulent use of £8 million from a state-run charity.

1985:

• Contraceptives were first sold in the Irish Republic.

•

Then Oxfam GB chief executive Mark Goldring issued an apology to the House of Commons International Development Committee for the actions of the charity’s workers in Haiti.

BIRTHDAYS:

• Sidney Poitier, actor, 92; Jimmy Greaves, television football pundit, 79; Mike Leigh, film director, 76;

Ivana Trump, socialite, 70; Gordon Brown, former prime minister and former Fife MP, 68; Phil Neal, former footballer and manager, 68; Patty Hearst, American newspaper heiress, 65; Imogen Stubbs, actress,

58; Ian Brown, rock singer, 56; Cindy Crawford, American model/actress, 53.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: