On this day: Derby Day on radio | Arms reduction pact

On this day in 1990, then Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and US president George H Bush signed an arms reduction pact. Picture: Getty

1679: Battle of Drumclog fought between Covenanters attending a conventicle and Royalist troops under Bloody Graham of Claverhouse.

1831: Sir James Clark Ross located the magnetic North Pole.

1841: Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain was founded.

1857: Royal Navy destroyed Chinese fleet in China Sea.

1911: Britain’s first electric trolley buses began operating in Bradford and Leeds.

1921: Derby Day was broadcast on radio for first time.

1935: Driving tests in Britain were introduced by Leslie Hore-Belisha, and L-plates were made compulsory.

1939: The British submarine Thetis sank while on trials in Liverpool Bay, with the loss of 99 lives. It was later raised and put back into service as HMS Thunderbolt.

1946: The first television licences were issued in Britain, at a fee of £2.

1953: Gordon Richards became the first jockey to be knighted.

1958: Charles de Gaulle became prime minister of France.

1966: Bob Dylan was booed by British folk fans for performing on stage with an electric guitar.

1973: Greece’s premier, George Papadopoulos, abolished the monarchy.

1976: Syrian force, estimated at 4,000 troops and 200 tanks, invaded Lebanon and captured Christian and Muslim positions as it advanced on Beirut in attempt to halt 14-month civil war.

1979: Rhodesia became Zimbabwe Rhodesia.

1990: Two British soldiers were killed in IRA gun attacks in West Germany and Lichfield, Staffordshire.

1990: Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev and United States president George H Bush signed agreement on the reduction of conventional and nuclear forces.

1994: Willie Carson, 51, won his fourth Derby at Epsom, on 7-2 favourite Erhaab.

2003: The People’s Republic of China began filling the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam.

2009: An Air France plane carrying 228 people – including five Britons – from Brazil to France vanished over the Atlantic after flying into a storm.

2009: General Motors filed for bankruptcy – the fourth largest US bankruptcy in history.

2011: Fifa president Sepp Blatter won a fourth term in charge after attempts by the English and Scottish Football Associations to delay the election failed.

BIRTHDAYS

Brian Cox, actor and director, 67; Pat Boone, pop singer, 79; Jason Donovan, singer and actor, 45; Lord Foster of Thames Bank, architect, 78; Morgan Freeman, actor and director, 76; Justine Henin, tennis champion, 31; Robert Powell, actor, 69; Jonathan Pryce CBE, actor, 66; Tom Robinson, rock singer, songwriter and guitarist, 63; Gerald Scarfe CBE, cartoonist, 77; Nigel Short MBE, chess grandmaster, 48; Ronnie Wood, rock guitarist (Rolling Stones), 66.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1793 Henry Francis Lyte, clergyman (author of Abide With Me); 1801 Brigham Young, Mormon leader and founder of Salt Lake City; 1878 John Masefield, poet laureate, playwright and novelist; 1907 Sir Frank Whittle, inventor of jet engine; 1926 Marilyn Monroe, actress; 1935 John McGrath, playwright, producer, director.

Deaths: 1943 Leslie Howard, actor and director (passenger in aircraft shot down by Germans); 1968 Helen Keller, blind and deaf author; 1999 Sir Christopher Cockerell, inventor of the hovercraft.