On this day: Funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran

On this day in 1989 the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini took place in Iran with around a million people in attendance. Picture: Getty

National day of Sweden.

1520: King Henry VIII and France’s King Francis I signed treaty ending French interference in Scotland.

1654: Sweden’s Queen Christina abdicated, and was succeeded by Charles X.

1660: Peace of Copenhagen ended war between Sweden and Denmark, opening the Baltic to foreign warships.

1683: First museum opened to the public – the Ashmolean Museum in Broad Street, Oxford, founded by Elias Ashmole.

1727: James Figg defeated Ned Sutton in London, in the first boxing title fight.

1840: Carlist Wars in Spain ended with surrender of Carlist forces.

1871: Alsace was annexed to Germany after French army was defeated in Franco-Prussian War.

1882: The three-mile coastal limit for territorial waters was established by the Hague Convention.

1921: Southwark Bridge across Thames in London opened.

1923: Steve Donoghue, riding Papyrus, became the first jockey to win the Derby three times in succession.

1936: Gatwick Airport was opened.

1942: The three-day Battle of Midway Island ended with a US victory. It was the turning point in the Pacific campaign.

1944: The allied landings began on the coast of Normandy. Operation Overlord was the biggest sea-borne invasion in history.

1953: Gordon Richards won his first Derby on Pinza, at odds of 5-1. It was his 28th ride in the classic.

1967: Egyptians closed Suez Canal during Arab-Israeli War.

1984: 250 Sikh militants and 47 Indian army troops were killed in fighting inside historic Golden Temple complex in Amritsar.

1985: Israel withdrew last troops from Lebanon, three years after its invasion of the country.

1988: The Queen stripped imprisoned jockey Lester Piggott of his OBE.

1989: Ethnic tensions mounted in Soviet Uzbekistan, where party chief said a riot started by marketplace disagreement took 50 lives.

1989: Ayatollah Khomeini was buried. Thousands of mourners flocked round the coffin, tipping the body on to the street and fighting over shreds of his shroud.

1991: Britain rejected offers from Colonel Gaddafi to restore diplomatic links between Britain and Libya.

1992: A book about the Princess of Wales, by Andrew Morton, claimed she had attempted suicide five times.

1994: West Indian Brian Lara became the first batsman to pass 500 runs in a single first-class innings when he hit 501 not out against Durham for Warwickshire.

2002: A near-Earth asteroid estimated at ten metres diameter exploded over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Libya. The resulting explosion was estimated to have a force of 26 kilotons, slightly more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb.

2004: Tamil was established as a classical language by the president of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam in a joint sitting of the two houses of the Indian parliament.

2007: President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was stripped of his honorary degree by Edinburgh University senate. The university said that at the time of the award, in 1984, it knew nothing of events in Matabeleland where 20,000 are thought to have died.

BIRTHDAYS

Björn Borg, Wimbledon tennis champion, 58; Sara Banerji, writer, artist and sculptor, 82; Sandra Bernhard, comedienne, 59; David Blunkett, MP, home secretary 2001-04, 67; Peter Alexander Rupert Carington, 6th Baron Carrington KG, foreign secretary 1979-82, 95; Paul Esswood, counter-tenor, 72; Mike Gatting OBE, English cricketer and commentator, 57; Jason Isaacs, actor, 51; Josie Lawrence, comedienne and actress, 55; Willie John McBride MBE, rugby player, 74; Marion Mould, show jumper, 67; Frank Tyson, cricketer, 84; Billie Whitelaw CBE, actress, 82; Mark Bright, TV pundit and former footballer, 52.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1599 Diego Valázquez, painter; 1755 Nathan Hale, American Revolution hero; 1799 Aleksandr Pushkin, Russian poet; 1868 Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Antarctic explorer; 1875 Thomas Mann, novelist; 1898 Dame Ninette de Valois DBE, founder of the Royal Ballet; 1900 Arthur Askey, comedian; 1909 Sir Isaiah Berlin, philosopher; 1922 Iain Hamilton, composer.

Deaths: 1762 Admiral George Anson, naval reformer and explorer; 1941 Louis Chevrolet, car pioneer; 1961 Carl Jung, psychoanalytic pioneer; 1968 Robert Kennedy, US senator; 1976 Paul Getty, oil businessman and at one time the richest man in world; 1990 Joe Loss, bandleader; 1991 Stan Getz, saxophonist; 2005 Anne Bancroft, actress; 2013 Esther Williams, champion swimmer and actress; 2013 Tom Sharpe, novelist.