On this day: Farc hostage Ingrid Betancourt rescued

On this day in 2008, Farc hostage Ingrid Betancourt, pictured above with her mother, was rescued by Colombian armed forces. Picture: Getty

1644: The Battle of Marston Moor took place near York. The Cromwellian victory over the Royalist Cavaliers under Prince Rupert was the turning point in the Civil War.

1865: The Salvation Army was started by William Booth.

1881: James Garfield, 20th United States president, was shot by Charles Guiteau in Washington DC. He died on 19 September.

1890: Brussels Act was passed by international conference to eradicate the African slave trade and liquor traffic with primitive peoples.

1900: The second Olympic Games opened in Paris.

1900: Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin flew his first airship from a field on the outskirts of Berlin.

1940: The Vichy government was formed after the collapse of France, with Henri Pétain as head of state.

1940: More than 440 interned Italians, many from families settled in Scotland, drowned when a German submarine sank British prison ship Arandora Star on her way to Canada.

1966: France exploded an atomic bomb at a Pacific atoll in the first of a series of six tests.

1972: Indira Gandhi and president Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto signed the agreement ending the Indo-Pakistan war.

1990: Failure of a ventilation system in the pedestrian tunnel linking holy city of Mecca and tent city caused a stampede in which 1,400 pilgrims died.

1990: Imelda Marcos, wife of the former president of the Philippines, was found not guilty of fraud in New York.

1994: Colombian World Cup star Andres Escobar, who scored an own goal as his side was knocked out of the tournament, was shot dead after returning home.

2001: Barry George was jailed for life at the Old Bailey for the murder of the television presenter Jill Dando on the doorstep of her home in west London in 1999. His conviction was judged unsafe by the Court of Appeal and was quashed in 2007. After a retrial, on 1 August, 2008, he was found not guilty and freed.

2002: Steve Fossett, an American millionaire businessman, became the first person to fly a balloon solo round the world. In February 2008, five months after he and his light aircraft went missing on a flight in Nevada, a Chicago court declared him officially dead.

2008: Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages held by Farc guerrillas, were rescued by the Colombian armed forces.

BIRTHDAYS

Jerry Hall, actress and model, 58; Lee Boardman, actor, 42; Kenneth Clarke, MP, chancellor of the Exchequer 1993-7, Secretary of State for Justice, Lord Chancellor, 74; Peter Kay, actor and comedian, 41; Mark Kermode, film critic, 51; Lindsay Lohan, actress, 28; Lord Mackay of Clashfern KT, Lord High Chancellor 1987-97, 87; Lord Owen, foreign secretary 1977-80, 76; George Simpson, Baron Simpson of Dunkeld, chief executive, Marconi 1996-2001, 72.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1489 Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; 1903 Lord Home of the Hirsel, Prime Minister 1963-64; 1903 King Olav V of Norway; 1904 Rene Lacoste, tennis champion.

Deaths: 1566 Nostradamus, astrologer; 1778 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosopher; 1937 Amelia Earhart, aviator (disappeared in the Pacific); 1961 Ernest Hemingway, novelist; 1973 Betty Grable, actress; 1977 Vladimir Nabokov, novelist; 1 997 James Stewart, actor; 2010 Dame Beryl Bainbridge DBE, novelist.