On this day: Winston Churchill launched 'V for Victory' campaign

Events, birthdays and anniversaries on 19 July

Prime Minister Winston Churchill outside 10 Downing Street, gesturing his famous 'V for Victory' hand signal, June 1943. Picture: Getty Images

19 July

1333: Battle of Halidon Hill at Berwick, in which Scots lost 600 men as they were crushed by Edward III of England and Edward Balliol.

1380: Thomas of Buckingham’s invasion army landed at Calais.

1545: The Mary Rose, flagship of Henry VIII’s battle fleet, keeled over and sank in the Solent with the loss of 700 lives.

1553: Mary Tudor was proclaimed Queen, while 15-year-old Lady Jane Grey, a Protestant, was deposed after only nine days and sent to the Tower.

1588: “There’s plenty of time to finish this game and thrash the Spaniards too,” Sir Francis Drake was said to have commented on Plymouth Hoe as he played bowls while the Spanish Armada approached.

1692: Five people were hanged for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, bringing the total to 20.

1821: Coronation of King George IV took place in Westminster Abbey.

1877: Spencer Gore became the first Wimbledon men’s singles champion, defeating William Marshall 6-1, 6-2, 6-4 in the final.

1879: Wild west gambler and gunman Doc Holliday made his first killing after a man shot up his bar in New Mexico.

1941: British prime minister Winston Churchill launched his “V for Victory” campaign during the Second World War.

1957: The first rocket fitted with a nuclear warhead was fired at Yucca Flat, Nevada.

1965: Shooting began on the Star Trek pilot episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”

1969: Apollo 11 went into moon orbit.

1992: John Smith became leader of the Labour party.

1986: Tim Witherspoon knocked out Frank Bruno in the 11th round at Wembley to retain the WBA heavyweight title.

1987: Nick Faldo won the first of his three Open Championship titles at Murfield with a score of 279.

1990: National Union of Mineworkers sued Arthur Scargill over missing Soviet money given during miners’ strike of 1984-5.

1995: The Prince of Wales gave up flying, despite being cleared of blame for crashing an aircraft he was piloting as it landed on Islay.

2001: The novelist and former MP, Lord Archer, was jailed for four years at the Old Bailey for perverting the course of justice and committing perjury during his 1987 libel trial against the Daily Star, which had accused him of sleeping with a prostitute.

2002: A public inquiry ruled that GP Harold Shipman, serving life for murdering 15 patients, altogether killed 215 patients in Hyde, near Manchester, and that he might have been responsible for 45 other deaths.

2011: News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch, his son, James, and the firm’s former chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, faced questions from MPs over the phone-hacking scandal that had led the 80-year-old media baron to shut down the News of the World.