On this day

1626: Manhattan island was bought from local Indians by Dutch settler Peter Minuit for trinkets worth about $25.

1840: The first postage stamp – the Penny Black – was issued by the Post Office for use.

1851: American inventor Linus Yale patented the lock which bears his name.

1856: Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, was born in Freiberg,

Moravia (now Czech Republic). 1937: The German airship Hindenburg exploded at its moorings in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 of the 97 people aboard.

1954: Roger Bannister ran the first sub-fourminute mile on the Iffley Road track in Oxford, in three minutes 59.4 seconds. 1960: Princess Margaret married Anthony Armstrong-jones (Lord Snowdon) in Westminster Abbey.

1966: Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, the Moors murderers, were found guilty at Chester Assizes and sentenced to life in jail.

1976: An earthquake struck Friuli in Northern Italy, causing 989 deaths and the destruction of entire villages. 1994: The Queen opened the Channel Tunnel. 1994: Nelson Mandela and the ANC were confirmed the winners in South Africa’s first post apartheid election.

1997: The Bank of England was given independence from political control.

2004: The series finale of the television sitcom Friends was shown on US channel NBC, attracting 52.46 million viewers. 2013: Three women missing for more than a decade are found alive in the US city of Cleveland, Ohio. Ariel Castro, is taken into custody.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Alcohol-related deaths reached their highest level for 20 years, according to the Office for National Statistics, after jumping by a fifth over the previous year.