On this day
1348: Edward III established the Order of the Garter.
1793: French King Louis XVI went on trial and was sentenced to the guillotine.
1840: American Charles Wilkes discovered the coast of Antarctica. 1853: Verdi’s Il Trovatore was premiered in Rome.
1915: The first casualties were suffered in an air raid over Britain, when a German Zeppelin bombed Great Yarmouth in Norfolk.
1937: The 18-year-old Margot Fonteyn made her debut in Giselle at Sadler’s Wells.
1942: The Japanese invaded Burma. 1943: Singer Janis Joplin was born in Texas.
1966: Indira Gandhi became prime minister of India, following in the footsteps of her father Jawaharlal Nehru.
1990: England’s rebel cricketers flew into South Africa as police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of 150 protesters at Johannesburg airport.
2009: Up to 1,500 tonnes of timber floated in the English Channel after a Russian-registered cargo ship lost part of its load in rough seas.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Elon Musk’s SpaceX completed the last big test of its crew capsule ahead of its planned space launches.