On this day

A US airliner plunged into the Hudson River 1559: Queen Elizabeth I was crowned.

1759: The British Museum opened in London.

1867: Forty skaters died when the frozen lake in London’s Regents Park gave way.

1880: The first telephone directory was the London Telephone Company.

1893: Ivor Novello (David Ivor Davies), composer, actor, director and playwright, was born in Cardiff.

1912: Italian aircraft dropped the first ever propaganda leaflets during the Italo-Turkish War. They offered a coin and a sack of cereal to every Arab in Tripolitania (Libya) who surrendered.

1912: The first sickness benefit (10 shillings per week), unemployment benefit (seven shillings) and maternity benefit (30 shillings) were introduced in Britain. published by 1929: Martin Luther King, American civil leader, was born in Atlanta, Georgia.

1992: The European Commission recognises the independence of Croatia and Slovenia, signalling the end of Yugoslavia as one nation.

2009: Dozens of passengers had a “miraculous” escape as a US airliner plunged into the Hudson River in New York.

2014: Actor Roger Lloyd-Pack, forever known to millions for his role as amiable dimwit Trigger in Only Fools And Horses, died at home in London at the age of 69.

ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Nearly 15,000 people fled from villages around the Philippines’ most active volcano, as lava flowed down its crater amid eruption warnings. rights