On this day
AD 304: Saint Agnes was martyred burnt at the stake at the age of 13 when she refused to marry the husband chosen by her father.
1793: Louis XVI, King of France since 1774, was guillotined after being found guilty of treason.
1846: The Daily News, the newspaper edited by Charles Dickens, was first published.
1907: Taxi cabs were officially recognised in Britain.
1911: The first Monte Carlo Rally began. 1924: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, father of the Russian Revolution, died of a brain haemorrhage at Gorki, outside Moscow. 1950: George Orwell (pen name of British author Eric Arthur Blair) died. His best known works include Animal Farm and 1984.
1954: The USA launched the USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclearpowered submarine.
1976: British and French Concordes made their maiden flights from London to Bahrain and Paris to Rio de Janeiro. 1991: Iraq threatened to use shot-down allied airmen as human shields against bomb attacks.
ON THIS DAY LAST YEAR: Greta Thunberg and three other young climate activists scolded the elites gathered at the World Economic Forum for not doing enough to deal with the climate emergency.