On this day: First Wimbledon

On this day in 1938 gas masks were first issued to British civilians in anticipation of the Second World War. Picture: Getty

9 JULY

National day of Argentina

1191: Richard I, the Lionheart, married Berengaria, reputed to be extremely ugly. Although Queen, she never set foot on English soil.

1540: Henry VIII divorced Anne of Cleves, nicknamed The Flanders Mare, and his fourth wife, after six months of marriage.

1686: League of Augsburg was formed by Holy Roman Empire, Spain, Sweden, Saxony, the Palatinate and Brandenburg against France’s King Louis XIV.

1867: Queen’s Park Football Club was formed, the first senior club in Scotland.

1872: The first doughnut cutter was patented in America by John Blondel. A sea captain, he is said to have invented the hole so that he could slip the doughnut over the handle of the ship’s wheel and enjoy his snack while steering.

1877: Wimbledon staged its first lawn tennis championship at its original site in Worple Road, London.

1882: Royal Navy bombarded Alexandria, Egypt.

1910: A stone tablet describing the fall of Jerusalem was discovered by archaeologists in Egypt.

1917: HMS Vanguard blew up in Scapa Flow with the loss of more than 800men.

1922: Johnny Weissmuller became first man to swim 100 metres in less than a minute.

1938: Gas masks were first issued to the civilian population of Britain in anticipation of the Second World War.

1984: York Minster was struck by lightning and the roof destroyed.

1990: Four were killed and hundreds injured when celebrations of Germany’s victory over Argentina in World Cup final turned violent.

1990: Saddam Hussein, Iraqi President, denied that his country possessed a nuclear weapon capability.

1991: Nineteen of the Army’s 55 infantry battalions targeted for scrapheap. Manpower to be cut from 156,000 to 116,000.

1995: Pete Sampras won his third Wimbledon title, beating Boris Becker.

2002: The African Union was established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

2007: The BBC was fined £50,000 for faking the winner of a phone-in competition on a Blue Peter programme.

2011: South Sudan became a nation in its own right, the climax of a process made possible by the 2005 peace deal that ended a long and bloody civil war.

BIRTHDAYS

Jim Kerr, Glasgow-born singer (Simple Minds), 54; John Mark Ainsley, tenor, 50; Marc Almond, singer, 54; Steve Coppell, football manager, 58; Richard Demarco CBE, Portobello-born artist and gallery director, 83; Tom Hanks, actor, director and writer, 57; David Hockney, artist, 76; Courtney Love, singer and actress, 49; Kenneth Hilton Osborne, Lord Osborne, Senator of the College of Justice in Scotland, 76; Jack White, musician (White Stripes), 38; Richard Wilson OBE, Greenock-born actor director, 77.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1819 Elias Howe, inventor of first practical sewing machine; 1888 Simon Marks, 1st Baron Marks of Broughton, founder of Marks & Spencer; 1901 Barbara Cartland, novelist; 1916 Sir Edward Heath, prime minister 1970-74.

Deaths: 1797 Edmund Burke, statesman, writer; 1932 King Camp Gillette, safety razor inventor; 1988 Barbara Woodhouse, animal trainer; 2009 Earl Haig of Bemersyde OBE, artist, Deputy Lieutenant of Ettrick and Lauderdale (and Roxburghshire) 1977-93.

On this day: First Wimbledon | HMS Vanguard