THIS DAY

65 BC: Horace, Roman poet, was born in Venusian Apulia.

1542: Mary, Queen of Scots, was born at Linlithgow Palace.

1733: A Dorset man reported seeing a polished silver disc in the sky – the first known sighting of an Unidentified Flying Object, or UFO.

1854: Pope Pius IX settled an ancient controversy by declaring that Christ’s mother, the Virgin Mary, was preserved from all sin from the moment she was conceived.

1859: Thomas de Quincey, essayist and opium addict, died in

Scotland.

1864: The Clifton Suspension Bridge over the River Avon at Bristol, designed by Brunel, was opened.

1894: James Thurber, American humorist and creator of Walter Mitty, was born in Ohio.

1980: John Lennon was shot dead in New York by Mark David Chapman.

1991: Leaders of the three republics – Russia, Belorussia and Ukraine – formed a “commonwealth of independent states” and pronounced the Soviet Union dead.

Clifton Suspension Bridge was opened in 1864