On this day

1453: The Hundred Years War ended when the French defeated the English at Castillon.

1717: George I, Hanoverian King of England, held a public concert on the Thames for Handel to conduct his hour-long Water Music. The King enjoyed it so much he asked for two complete encores.

1790: Scottish economist and philopspher Adam Smith died in Edinburgh, aged 67.

1889: Erle Stanley Gardner, US author and lawyer who created Perry Mason, was born. 1917: The British Royal Family adopted the name House of Windsor in place of House of Saxe-coburg-gotha.

1945: The Potsdam Conference began with world leaders Truman, Stalin and Churchill planning for the future peace at the end of the Second World War.

1955: Walt Disney’s Disneyland was opened in California.

1959: Billie Holiday, jazz singer – arguably the greatest of them all – was arrested on her death bed in hospital for possession of narcotics. She died later that day. 1969: Oh Calcutta!, the sex revue devised by theatre critic Kenneth Tynan, pictured left, opened in New York. Critic Clive Barnes said the show gave pornography a dirty name.

1975: An international space link-up between US astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts took place when they crossed over from their docked spacecraft and shook hands 140 miles above Britain’s south coast.

2014: Malaysia Airlines flight 17 crashed in in Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. A Dutch investigation later determined that the aircraft was shot down by a Russian-made surface-to-air missile.

Birthdays

Alun Armstrong, actor, 75; Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, 74; Wayne Sleep, dancer, 73; David Hasselhoff, actor and singer, 69; Darren Day, actor, singer and television presenter, 53; Jaap Stam, retired footballer, 49; Konnie Huq, pictured, TV presenter, 46.