On this day: Flight across Channel

Bryan Allen in the Gossamer Albatross. Picture: Getty

National day of Philippines.

1683: Rye House plot to assassinate King Charles II and his brother James, Duke of York, was uncovered.

1837: Sir William Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone patented the first electric telegraph.

1901: Cuban Convention made that nation virtually a protectorate of United States.

1908: The Rotherhithe-Stepney road tunnel under the Thames was opened.

1922: Insulin, the treatment for diabetes, was patented by Frederick Banting.

1930: Germany’s Max Schmeling won the vacant world heavyweight boxing title against Jack Sharkey in New York on a disqualification in round four – the only man to win the title in such a manner.

1940: Japanese planes bombed Chungking, China.

1952: Chris Chataway ran two miles in a record eight minutes, 55.6 seconds. He was to beat this in 1953 with a time of eight minutes, 49.6 seconds.

1965: The Beatles were each created MBE in the Queen’s birthday honours list.

1979: Bryan Allen, a racing cyclist, pedalled across the Channel in his craft, Gossamer Albatross.

1984: United States secretary of state George P Shultz insisted US government had hard evidence that Nicaragua was providing war material to rebels in El Salvador.

1989: MPs voted 293 to 69 to allow television cameras into the House of Commons.

1990: Israel’s new right-wing government vowed to spend more money on new settlements in the Occupied Lands.

1990: Prime minister Margaret Thatcher ruled out a Channel Tunnel rail link subsidy.

1991: Boris Yeltsin crushed Communist rivals in Russia’s first presidential election by taking 60 per cent of the vote.

2001: Robert Edward Dyer was sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment for attempting to extort money from Tesco through a letter bomb campaign.

2007: Jamaican police, in a dramatic about-turn, said the Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer had died from natural causes and was not strangled.

2009: Former prime minister Margaret Thatcher was said to be “recovering well” after she fell at home and broke her arm.

BIRTHDAYS

Pat Jennings, footballer, 68; Oliver Knussen CBE, Glasgow-born composer, 61; Timothy Busfield, American actor, 56; George Bush, United States president 1989-93, 89; Mark Calcavecchia, American golfer, 53; John Copley, British opera producer and director, 80; Chick Corea, American jazz pianist, 72; John Ruaridh Grant Mackenzie, 5th Earl of Cromartie, explosives engineer, 65; Ice Cube, hip-hop star and film maker, 44; Vic Damone, American singer, 85; Sophie Lawrence, British actress, 41; Javed Miandad, cricketer, 56; Richie Richardson, West Indian cricketer, 51; Cathy Tyson, British actress, 48.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1843 Sir David Gill, Aberdeen-born astronomer; 1897 Sir Anthony Eden, later Earl of Avon, Conservative prime minister 1955-57; 1929 Anne Frank, diarist of life under the Nazis.

Deaths: 1842 Thomas Arnold, educationist and headmaster of Rugby School; 1957 Jimmy Dorsey, American musician and bandleader; 1980 Sir Billy Butlin, holiday camp pioneer; 2003 Gregory Peck, film actor; 2006 György Ligeti, composer.

On this day: Flight across Channel | Yeltsin