On this day

1891: The first American Express travellers’ cheque was cashed.

1926: Houdini, famous escapologist and magician, survived for one-and-a-half hours in a bronze coffin in a hotel swimming pool in Los Angeles.

1958: The nuclear-powered submarine Nautilus completed its historic journey under the North Pole.

1962: Marilyn Monroe died alone in her bedroom from “acute barbiturate poisoning”. She was 36.

1963: Britain, the United States and the USSR signed a nuclear test ban treaty.

1974: US president Richard Nixon admitted his complicity in the Watergate affair.

1984: Richard Burton, Welsh actor who became a

Hollywood legend mainly through his marriage to Elizabeth Taylor, died in Geneva, aged 58.

2010: The Copiapo mining accident trapped 33 Chilean miners approximately 2,300ft below the ground. The miners a survived for a record 69 days underground before they were finally rescued.

2012: Andy Murray claimed two Olympic medals after a momentous day on Wimbledon’s Centre Court.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Restoration work began on the 3,300-year-old tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, pictured, with the gilded outer coffin removed for the first time since it was discovered in 1922.