On this day: Gandhi sentenced to six years in prison

1291: Pope Gregory X issued a bull awarding clerical tithes of Scotland to Edward I of England for crusade. 1689: The Earl of Leven was commissioned to raise a regiment in Border country to hold Edinburgh against Jacobites. It became The King’s Own Scottish Borderers. 1834: The Tolpuddle Martyrs, set up to stop decline of agricultural wages, were sentenced to seven years’ transportation to Tasmania. 1913: Greece’s King George I was assassinated in Salonika. 1922: Mahatma Gandhi was sentenced to six years in prison in India for civil disobedience. 1925: Madame Tussaud’s London wax museum burned down. 1930: The planet Pluto was discovered by the astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. 1931: World’s first electric razor was manufactured by American firm Schick Inc. 1950: Roger Bannister ran the mile in a record 4 minutes 1.48 seconds. 1965: Aleksei Leonov left Soviet spacecraft to make first space walk, lasting ten minutes. 1967: The oil tanker Torrey Canyon was wrecked on Pollard Rock between Isles of Scilly and Land’s End, spilling 120,000 gallons of crude into the sea. 1969: United States and Soviet Union proposed international treaty to ban nuclear weapons from ocean floor. 1984: Oxford and Cambridge Boat race took place on a Sunday for the first time, having been postponed for a day because the Cambridge boat had been damaged in a collision. 1992: South Africa’s referendum on power-sharing with black people resulted in a landslide Yes vote. 1992: Pat Clinton became the sixth Scot to hold a world boxing title when he dethroned the Mexican Isidro Perez for the WBO flyweight crown. 2002: MPs voted 386-175 to ban hunting with dogs in England and Wales. 2003: 139 Labour MPs rebelled in a Commons vote on war with Iraq and voted against the Labour government, the biggest act of defiance in British political history. 2003: Sign language is recognised as an official British language. 2009: Josef Fritzl, the Austrian accused of imprisoning his daughter and fathering seven children with her, changed his plea to guilty on all charges. BIRTHDAYS Vanessa Williams, actress and singer, 51; Ron Atkinson, football manager and television commentator, 75; Patrick Barlow, actor, writer and director, 67; Luc Besson, film director, 55; Irene Cara, singer and actress, 55; Brad Dourif, actor, 64; Pat Eddery, jockey 62; Timo Glock, Formula 1 driver, 32; Queen Latifah, actress and singer, 44; Kenny Lynch OBE, singer/actor, 75; Sophia Myles, actress, 34; Courtney Pine CBE, jazz saxophonist, 50. ANNIVERSARIES Births: 1844 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, composer; 1858 Rudolf Diesel, inventor of engine; 1860 Andrew Kirkaldy, golfer; 1869 Neville Chamberlain, Conservative prime minister 1937-1940; 1893 Wilfred Owen, war poet; 1932 John Updike, Pulitzer prize-winning novelist; 1949 Alex Higgins, snooker player. Deaths: 1584 Tsar Ivan the Terrible; 1988 Percy Thrower, horticulturist and broadcaster; 2007 Bob Woolmer, cricketer and coach; 2008 Sir Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer; 2008 Anthony Minghella, scriptwriter and film director; 2009 Natasha Richardson, actress.