On this day: Clothes rationing introduced in Britain

Some of the women who rushed to a Croydon store to take advantage of a coupon-free sub-standard stockings offer. Picture: Keystone/Getty Images

1771: Russia completed its conquest of the Crimea.

1780: The Gordon Riots took place in London when Lord George Gordon called his followers to St George’s Field and led them in protest at relaxation of restrictions on Roman Catholics.

1835: American showman Phineas T Barnum began his first circus tour.

1868: The first Trades Union Congress was held in Manchester.

1896: Marconi was granted the first patent for a system of communication by means of electromagnetic waves.

1916: Boy Cornwell died from wounds after the Battle of Jutland. The 16-year-old had stayed at his post by the forward gun on HMS Chester while all his fellows were killed around him. He was awarded the VC posthumously – the youngest to receive it.

1917: Brazil revoked its neutrality in First World War and seized German ships.

1938: Robert and Edward Kennedy, youngest sons of the American Ambassador to London, opened the children’s zoo in Regent’s Park, London.

1941: Clothes rationing was introduced in Britain, and was not lifted until 1949. Sixty coupons were allowed each year for all except baby clothes. One dress needed 11 coupons, and a man’s suit, 26.

1941: Germany’s Adolf Hitler and Italy’s Benito Mussolini held meeting at Brenner Pass in the Alps.

1946: Britain and United States restored Azores base to Portugal.

1953: Queen Elizabeth was crowned in Westminster Abbey, on a dull, showery day, as it was for her father’s coronation in 1937.

1954: Lester Piggott, aged 18, became the youngest jockey to win the Derby when he rode Never Say Die, a 33-1 outsider, to victory at Epsom.

1966: First soft landing on Moon successfully completed by United States spacecraft, Surveyor.

1974: King of Bhutan, Jig Singhi Wangchuk, was crowned to become, at age 18, youngest monarch in world.

1992: Denmark rejected the Maastricht Treaty in a national referendum.

1994: Twenty-five senior intelligence officers in Northern Ireland died when their Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre.

1997: Timothy McVeigh was found guilty of murder and conspiracy in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, in which 168 people, including 19 children, died.

2010: Gunman Derrick Bird went on the rampage in Cumbria, killing 12 people and injuring 11. Bird later killed himself.

2014: King Juan Carlos of Spain announced his abdication after 39 years on the throne, with his son, Crown Prince Felipe, to succeed him.