On this day

1625: Charles I was crowned King of England and Scotland.

1863: Sir Henry Royce, co-founder of Rolls-Royce Motor Company, was born in Alwalton, near Peterborough, the son of a miller.

1923: Chemist and physicist Sir James Dewar, who invented the vacuum flask, died in London.

1924: Jazz singer Sarah Vaughan was born in New Jersey.

1931: Arnold Bennett, novelist and writer (Clayhanger) died of typhoid after a visit to Paris.

1945: The last of more than 1,000 V2 bombs dropped on Britain landed at Orpington, Kent.

1958: Nikita Khrushchev ousted prime minister Nikolai Bulganin to take power in the USSR.

1966: Football’s World Cup trophy was found in a garden in south London by a dog called Pickles after it was stolen from a public exhibition in Westminster Hall a week earlier.

1977: Two jumbo jets collided on the ground at foggy Tenerife airport, killing 574 people.

1980: Mount St Helens, above, in Washington state in the US became active after 123 years dormant.

1980: North Sea oil rig accommodation platform Alexander Kielland collapsed, killing 123 workers.

1991: David Icke, above, former goalkeeper, BBC sports presenter and then Green Party spokesman, announced he had been “chosen” to save the world.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: A six-year-old boy in southern Poland told how he caught a three-yearold who jumped from a window while his drunk relatives were asleep.