NOW & THEN
1683: Rye House plot to assassinate King Charles II and his brother James, Duke of York, was uncovered.
1837: Sir William Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone patented the first electric telegraph.
1839: Abner Doubleday credited with inventing baseball in Cooperstown, New York.
1901: Cuban Convention made that nation virtually a protectorate of United States.
1908: The Rotherhithe-stepney road tunnel under the Thames was opened.
1921: Postmen delivered mail on a Sunday for the last time.
1922: Insulin, the treatment for diabetes, was patented by Frederick Banting.
1930: Germany’s Max Schmeling won the vacant world heavyweight boxing title against Jack Sharkey in New York on a disqualification in round four – the only man to win the title in such a manner.
1937: Purge of Russian generals began.
1952: Chris Chataway ran two miles in a record eight minutes, 55.6 seconds. He was to beat this in 1953 with a time of eight minutes, 49.6 seconds.
1965: The Beatles were each created MBE in the Birthday Honours list.
1979: Bryan Allen, a Californian racing cyclist, pedalled across the Channel from Folkestone to Cap Gris Nez in his craft Gossamer Albatross.
1984: United States secretary of state George P Shultz insisted the US government had hard evidence that Nicaragua was providing war material to rebels in El Salvador.
1987: Central African Republic’s former Emperor Jean-bédel Bokassa was sentenced to death on conviction of murder, arbitrary arrest and embezzlement of public funds.
1989: MPS voted 293 to 69 to allow television cameras into the House of Commons.
1990: Israel’s new right-wing government vowed to spend more money on new settlements in the Occupied Lands.
1990: Prime minister Margaret Thatcher ruled out a Channel Tunnel rail link subsidy.
1991: Boris Yeltsin crushed Communist rivals in Russia’s first presidential election by taking 60 per cent of the vote.
1992: At the Earth Summit in Brazil, John Major pledged that Britain would step up efforts to halt global warming and curb population growth.
1994: Labour made sweeping gains from the Conservatives in the European elections.
1995: Two men in Sussex shared a record National Lottery jackpot of £22.5 million.
2001: Robert Edward Dyer was sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment for attempting to extort money from Tesco through a letter bomb campaign.
2009: The former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher was said to be “recovering well” in hospital after she fell at home and broke her arm.
2009: Veteran horror star Christopher Lee and golfer Nick Faldo were knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
2016: A gunman killed 49 people and injured 53 others during a shooting spree in Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.