On this day: Dennis Taylor wins Embassy snooker championship

Events, birthdays and anniversaries on April 28
1985: Dennis Taylor wins the Embassy snooker final after a spectacular last frame decider with Steve Davis. Picture: Adrian Murrell /Allsport1985: Dennis Taylor wins the Embassy snooker final after a spectacular last frame decider with Steve Davis. Picture: Adrian Murrell /Allsport
1985: Dennis Taylor wins the Embassy snooker final after a spectacular last frame decider with Steve Davis. Picture: Adrian Murrell /Allsport

1398: Dukedom of Rothesay conferred on David Stuart, eldest son of King Robert III of Scotland.

1558: Walter Mylne burned at the stake at St Andrews for heresy, the last Protestant martyr in Scotland.

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1603: The funeral of Queen Elizabeth took place at Westminster Abbey.

1770: Captain Cook in the Endeavour reached Australia, at a point in New South Wales they named Sting Ray Bay. Found to be a botanist’s paradise, it was later renamed Botany Bay.

1789: The mutiny on the Bounty took place in the South Seas, led by Fletcher Christian. Cast adrift with his loyal sailors in an overloaded open boat in the Pacific Ocean, Bligh survived.

1876: Queen Victoria was declared Empress of India.

1919: Two crew members were lost from Fraserburgh lifeboat at harbour entrance.

1923: The first FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium was staged, Bolton Wanderers defeating West Ham 2-0.

1931: The morning after a stiff Budget, motorists had to pay one shilling and fourpence (just under 7p) a gallon for petrol, a rise of twopence a gallon.

1945: Benito Mussolini, Italian dictator, and his mistress Claretta Petacci were executed by partisans and their bodies were hung, head down, in the Piazza Loretto, Milan.

1952: Japan regained sovereignty after Second World War.

1954: Premiers of India, Pakistan, Burma, Indonesia and Ceylon conferred at Colombo.

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1955: Ruth Ellis was sent for trial accused of the murder of her lover. She later became the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

1961: Britain applied to join European Common Market.

1967: World Boxing authorities took away Muhammad Ali’s title for refusing to serve in United States forces.

1985: Dennis Taylor won the Embassy snooker championship after a spectacular final frame with Steve Davis.

1992: Triumphant rebel leaders arrived in Kabul in huge motor convoy to set up provisional Islamic government, marking the end of the 14-year civil war against communism in Afghanistan.

1993: A major health inquiry was launched in Scotland after an unknown number of women were wrongly given the “all-clear” on smear tests for cervical cancer.

1995: Less than a year after it opened, Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre faced a cash crisis over debts of £3.1million.

1996: A deranged gunman shot dead 32 people when he went on the rampage in Port Arthur, Tasmania.

2011: A bomb attack in the main square in the Moroccan city of Marrakech killed more than 15 people and injured 20.

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2014: Ann Maguire, a 61-year-old schoolteacher, was stabbed to death by one of her pupils in front of her class at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds. It was the first time in the UK that a teacher had been killed in a classroom.

Births: 1442 King Edward IV; 1758 James Monroe, fifth United States president; 1878 Lionel Barrymore, actor; 1912 Odette Hallowes MBE, British wartime agent; 1913 Reg Butler, sculptor; 1916 Harper Lee, novelist (notably To Kill a Mockingbird); 1937 Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq 1979-2003; 1937 Jean Redpath MBE, Edinburgh-born folk singer; 1948 Sir Terence Pratchett OBE, British fantasy author.

Deaths: 1831 John Abernethy, surgeon; 1842 Sir Charles Bell, anatomist; 1865 Sir Samuel Cunard, ship-owner; 1935 Sir Alexander Mackenzie, composer; 1940 Luisa Tetrazzini, soprano; 1976 Richard Hughes, novelist (A High Wind in Jamaica); 1988 Fenner Brockway, Baron Brockway, politician and pacifist; 1992 Francis Bacon, artist; 1992 Olivier Messiaen, composer and organist; 1999 Sir Alf Ramsay, footballer and manager; 2014 Richard Kershaw, British broadcaster; 2015 Keith Harris, ventriloquist.