On this day
1782: Spain captured Minorca from the British.
1788: Sir Robert Peel, who as Home Secretary formed the Metropolitan
Police and later became Prime Minister, was born in Lancashire.
1811: The Prince of Wales became Prince Regent on the established insanity of George III.
1840: Two British inventors were born: Sir Hiram Stevens, who perfected the machine gun, and Scottish veterinary surgeon John Boyd Dunlop, inventor of the pneumatic bicycle tyre.
1924: The BBC “pips”, or time signals, from Greenwich Observatory were heard for the first time.
1936: Charles Chaplin’s film Modern Times had its premiere in America.
1953: Sweet rationing ends in Britain after eleven years in force.
1957: Bill Haley & His Comets arrived in London at the start of their British tour and received a wildly enthusiastic welcome.
1961: The Sunday Telegraph began publication.
1967: The Musicians’ Union banned the Rolling Stones’s Let’s Spend The Night Together from Eamonn Andrews’s television show.
1982: Laker Airlines, created by former pilot Sir Freddie Laker to cut prices and make air travel more accessible, collapsed with debts of £270 million. 1994: A mortar bomb exploded in the main market square in Sarajevo killing 68 and wounding 200 people.
astrologer, 70; actress, 59; Jose golfer, 55; Bobby singer, 52; Andy Hinchcliffe, former footballer, 52; Cristiano
Ronaldo, footballer, 36