On this day: Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) beat Liston

On this day in 1964, Cassius Clay, later Muhammad Ali, won the world heavyweight boxing championship from Sonny Liston. Picture: Getty

1412: Bishop Henry Wardlaw formally incorporated masters and students at the centre of higher education at St Andrews as a “university,” although it was not officially inaugurated until 4 February, 1414.

1570: Queen Elizabeth I of England was excommunicated by Pope Pius V.

1601: Earl of Essex was executed for treason.

1760: Robert Clive left India to return to England.

1791: Bank of United States founded.

1917: Liner Laconia torpedoed by Germans in the Atlantic, with the loss of 30 lives, many of them American.

1948: Communist coup in Czechoslovakia.

1954: Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser usurped power as premier of Egypt.

1955: HMS Ark Royal, Britain’s largest aircraft carrier, completed.

1956: Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev went before Communist Party congress in Moscow and denounced late dictator Joseph Stalin.

1958: The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was set up under the presidency of Lord Russell.

1964: Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) won the world heavyweight boxing championship, when Sonny Liston retired in the seventh round.

1969: Mariner 6 launched from Cape Kennedy for a Mars fly-by.

1972: US spacecraft Pioneer X was launched to Jupiter.

1982: European Court of Human Rights ruled that British parents could refuse to allow children to be beaten at school.

1986: Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos resigned, brought down by a “people’s power” uprising, military revolt, and American pressure.

1990: At least 60 people killed in India as violence marred elections in eight states.

1991: Iraqi troops were ordered out of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. 1993: ICI and British Gas announced they were cutting more than 7,000 jobs.

2009: A Turkish Airlines plane crashed on landing at Amsterdam’s Schiphol international airport, killing nine people and injuring more than 80.

2009: Conservative leader David Cameron’s eldest son Ivan died.

2011: In the Irish general election, the Fianna Fáil-led government suffered the worst defeat of a sitting government since the formation of the Irish state.

BIRTHDAYS

Ed Balls, Labour MP and shadow chancellor, 47; Diane Baker, actress, 76; Elkie Brooks, singer, 68; Sir Tom Courtenay, actor, 77; Lord Gill, Lord Justice-Clerk, 72; Téa Leoni, actress, 48; Park Ji-Sung, South Korean footballer, 33; Lord Puttnam CBE, film producer, 73; James William Stuart Whitemore Sempill, 21st Lord Sempill, 65; Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, principal and vice-chancellor, Edinburgh University 1994-2002, president, Royal Society of Edinburgh 2002-05, 73.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1841 Pierre Auguste Renoir, painter; 1873 Enrico Caruso, singer; 1890 Dame Myra Hess, pianist; 1914 John Arlott, poet, cricket writer and commentator; 1917 Anthony Burgess, author; 1943 George Harrison, Beatle, composer and film producer.

Deaths: 1723 Sir Christopher Wren, architect; 1899 Paul Julius von Reuter, founder of news agency; 1914 Sir John Tenniel, illustrator. 1970 Mark Rothko, artist; 1983 Tennessee Williams, playwright; 1990 Johnnie Ray, pop singer; 2001 Sir Donald Bradman, cricketer.