•
1924 Ramsay MacDonald became Britain’s first Labour prime minister.
•
1944 the Allied landings began in Anzio, Italy.
•
1946 President Truman established the Central Intelligence Group, from which, two years later, the CIA was created.
1790 Fletcher Christian and the Bounty’s other mutineers landed on Pitcairn Island.
•
1806 William Pitt the Younger, prime minister 1783–1801 and 1804–06, died aged 46.
•
1837 John Field, Irish composer who created the piano nocturne, died in Moscow.
•
1883 Gustave Doré, graphic artist who illustrated such works as Dante’s Divine Comedy, died.
•
1943 Tripoli was captured by British forces under Field Marshal Montgomery.
•
1985 the proceedings of the House of Lords were televised for the first time.
•
1989 surrealist painter Salvador Dalí died in Figueres, Spain, aged 84.
41 Gaius Caesar (Caligula), Roman Emperor from 37, was murdered.
•
1664 Sir John Vanbrugh, soldier, playwright and architect of Blenheim Palace, died.
•
1712 Frederick the Great, King of Prussia 1740–86, born in Berlin.
•
1895 Lord Randolph Churchill, statesman and father of Sir Winston, died aged 45.
•
1965 Sir Winston Churchill, prime minister 1940–45 and 1951–55, died aged 90.
•
1972 a Japanese soldier, Shoichi Yokoi, was discovered on Guam, 28 years after the Japanese surrender, believing that the Second World War was still in progress.
•
1984 the Apple Macintosh personal computer went on sale.
1533 King Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn in secret.
•
1640 Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, died.
•
1759 Robert Burns, Scottish poet whose popularity is reaffirmed in the Burns Night celebrations, was born in Alloway, Ayr.
•
1919 the League of Nations was founded to resolve international disputes.
•
1924 the first Winter Olympics began in Chamonix, France.
•
1947 gangster Al Capone died at home of a heart attack.
•
1971 Idi Amin deposed the Ugandan president Milton Obote.
•
1990 Benazir Bhutto, the prime minister of Pakistan, became the first head of government to give birth.
1790 Così fan tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was first performed in Vienna.
•
1824 Théodore Géricault, painter who used corpses in the morgue as models for The Raft of the Medusa, died.
•
1855 Gérard de Nerval, French Romantic poet who kept a lobster as a pet, died.
•
1885 General Charles Gordon was killed at Khartoum during the rising led by the Mahdi.
•
1905 the largest diamond in the world, the Cullinan, was mined at Pretoria, South Africa.
•
1950 India became a republic within the Commonwealth.
•
1998 President Bill Clinton denied having had sexual relations with intern Monica Lewinsky.
1302 Dante Alighieri was expelled from Florence for his political activities, and while in exile wrote his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy.
•
1880 the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison was granted a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.
•
1944 Leningrad (now St Petersburg) was relieved after a 28-month siege.
•
1945 the Soviet army liberated 5,000 inmates of Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
•
1967 Virgil Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee, astronauts, died after an electrical fault ignited pure oxygen in their Apollo 1 spacecraft.
•
1972 Mahalia Jackson, the “Queen of Gospel”, died.
814 Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor since 800, died aged 71.
•
1547 King Henry VIII, who had reigned since 1509, died aged 55.
•
1596 Sir Francis Drake, English admiral and circumnavigator of the globe, died aged 55 at Portobelo, Panama.
•
1807 London’s Pall Mall became the first street in the world illuminated by gaslight.
•
1896 the first speeding fine was imposed on a British motorist for exceeding 2mph in a built-up area.
•
1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after lift-off and its crew of five men and two women were killed.
1819 Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles landed in Singapore, with it becoming a British colony five years later.
•
1820 King George III, who had reigned since 1760, died aged 81.
•
1856 the Victoria Cross was established by royal warrant to honour acts of valour during the Crimean War.
•
1860