On this day: England beat Scotland at Murrayfield

On this day in 1994 England beat Scotland 15-14 after a controversial penalty in the Calcutta Cup match at Murrayfield. Picture: Getty

1782: Spanish forces captured Minorca Island, off Spain, from British.

1792: Tippoo of Mysore, India, was defeated in war with British, and Hyderabad ceded half of Mysore to British. He resumed hostilities in 1798-99.

1811: The Prince of Wales became Prince Regent on the established chronic porphyria of George III.

1885: Congo state was established under Belgium’s King Leopold II as personal possession.

1918: Church and state in Russia were officially separated.

1922: First issue of Reader’s Digest published, in New York.

1924: The BBC “pips” or time signals from Greenwich Observatory were heard for the first time.

1931: Captain Malcolm Campbell, driving Bluebird, set world land speed record of 245mph at Daytona Beach. He was first man to exceed 200mph.

1936: Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times premiered in America.

1961: Sunday Telegraph began publication.

1962: The conjunction of Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn was watched with interest by astronomers. In India the end of the world was forecast and all events were cancelled, including Hindu weddings, as people waited for doomsday.

1967: The Musicians’ Union banned the Rolling Stones’s Let’s Spend The Night Together from the Eamonn Andrews TV show.

1971: Astronauts from US Apollo 14 landed on the Moon.

1976: Almost 23,000 lives lost in Guatemala earthquake.

1982: Laker Airlines, created by former British pilot Sir Freddie Laker to cut prices and make air travel more accessible, collapsed with debts of £270m.

1983: Klaus Barbie, Nazi war criminal, was flown to France to face charges.

1989: Sky Television, headed by Rupert Murdoch, launched the first four of its six planned channels.

1991: Iraq suspended fuel sales to its citizens.

1994: A controversial last-minute penalty gave England a 15-14 win over Scotland in the Calcutta Cup match at Murrayfield.

1996: United States president Bill Clinton was ordered to testify at the trial of Susan McDougal, one of his partners in the failed Whitewater Arkansas land deal.

1997: The so-called Big Three banks in Switzerland announced the creation of a $71 million fund to aid Holocaust survivors and their families.

2000: Russian forces massacred at least 60 civilians in the Novye Aldi suburb of Grozny, Chechnya.

2002: Two pilots found guilty of “gross negligence” by the Ministry of Defence after the Mull of Kintyre Chinook helicopter crash, in which 29 people died, were cleared by a specially constituted House of Lords committee.

2004: Twenty-three Chinese people drowned when a group of 35 cockle-pickers were trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, England. Twenty-one bodies were recovered.

2009: Undefeated world super-middleweight and light-heavyweight boxing champion Joe Calzaghe announced his decision to retire. The 36-year-old Welshman quit the ring with a glittering record of 46 wins from 46 fights.

BIRTHDAYS

Charlotte Rampling OBE, actress, 69; Bobby Brown, singer, 46; Sven-Göran Eriksson, Swedish football coach, 67; Russell Grant, astrologer, 64; Christopher Haden-Guest, 5th Baron Haden-Guest, actor, writer, director and musician (notably the film Spinal Tap), 67; Barbara Hershey, actress, 67; Susan Hill CBE, novelist and playwright, 73; Jennifer Jason Leigh, actress, 53; Michael Mann, film director, 72; Jose-Maria Olazabal, Spanish golfer and Ryder Cup winning captain, 49; Cristiano Ronaldo, Portuguese footballer, 30; Michael Sheen OBE, actor, 46; Tom Wilkinson OBE, actor 67.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1788 Sir Robert Peel, three times prime minister, and founder of Conservative Party; 1799 John Lindley, botanist; 1840 John Boyd Dunlop, Scottish veterinary surgeon and patentee of pneumatic tyre; 1840 Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, inventor of first fully automatic machine-gun; 1881 Frederick Lonsdale, playwright; 1893 Captain WE Johns, First World War pilot and author, creator of Biggles; 1914 William Burroughs, writer; 1919 Red Buttons, actor and comedian; 1920 Frank Muir, writer and broadcaster.

Deaths: 1867 Henry Crabb Robinson, diarist and lawyer; 1881 Thomas Carlyle, essayist and historian; 1941 Andrew “Banjo” Paterson, Australian journalist who adapted Waltzing Matilda from a traditional ditty; 1946 George Arliss, stage and film actor; 1988 Emeric Pressburger, film producer; 1993 Lord Bernstein, founder of Granada Group; 2004 Frances Partridge, Bloomsbury group diarist; 2010 Ian Carmichael OBE, actor.