On this day: Gonzalez wins 5-hour Wimbledon match

Pancho Gonzalez, pictured, and Charlie Pasarell played a record 112-game singles match at Wimbledon in 1969. Picture: Getty Images

1595: Earl of Tyrone was proclaimed traitor for his rebellion in Ireland.

1867: The first patent for barbed wire was taken out by Lucien Smith of Kent, Ohio.

1891: First Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle was published in Strand magazine.

1920: The Hague was made the permanent seat of the International Court of Justice.

1942: RAF carried out 1,000-bomber raid on Bremen.

1944: Battle of Caen began.

1945: The United Nations Organisation was founded.

1948: Joe Louis made the record 25th defence of his heavyweight boxing title, knocking out Joe Walcott.

1950: The Korean War began when Communist forces of the north crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded the south. Nearly five million troops and civilians died in the three-year war.

1951: World’s first regular colour television service was begun by CBS in New York with show featuring Ed Sullivan.

1951: Metropolitan Police College at Hendon, London, admitted its first cadets for training.

1959: Eamon de Valera assumed office as president of the Republic of Ireland.

1969: Pancho Gonzalez and Charlie Pasarell played a record 112-game singles match, on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. It lasted five hours 12 minutes. Gonzalez, aged 41, won.

1969: British athlete Bruce Tulloh completed a run of 2,876 miles from Los Angeles to New York, which he did in 64 days, 21 hours, and 50 minutes, beating the previous record time of just over 73 days.

1975: Mozambique became fully independent after a ten-year war against Portuguese colonial domination.

1990: IRA bomb injured seven, at the Carlton Club, London.

1990: Seven-thousand King Penguins killed themselves on uninhabited sub-Antarctic Macquaine Island. Their bodies were piled four deep in this bizarre mass suicide and the reason remains a mystery.

1991: Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from Yugoslavia, triggering conflict.

1992: Skirmishes between English and French fishermen intensified when a party from the minesweeper HMS Brecon boarded a trawler off the Scilly Isles.

1994: John Major used his right of veto to block the appointment of Belgian Jean-Luc Dehaene as the next president of the European Commission.

1997: Jonathan Aitken, a former Cabinet minister, resigned from the Privy Council, as Scotland Yard investigated allegations that he had committed perjury and conspired to pervert the course of justice during a libel action against the Guardian newspaper and Granada TV.

2008: The Queen stripped president Robert Mugabe of his honorary knighthood “as a mark of revulsion at the abuse of human rights and abject disregard for the democratic process in Zimbabwe”.

2011: A parade of 2,500 military personnel, veterans and cadets took place down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh to mark UK Armed Forces Day.

BIRTHDAYS

Carly Simon, singer and songwriter, 70; Sir Peter Blake CBE, pop artist, 83; Tim Finn OBE, singer/songwriter, 63; Ricky Gervais, comedian, actor and writer, 54; Iestyn Harris, rugby league and union player, 39; Johnny Herbert, racing driver, 51; Rhoda Lewis, actress, 82; Eddie Large, Glasgow-born comedian, 74; Roy Marsden, actor, 74; George Michael, singer, 52; Greg Raymer, professional poker player, 51; Patrick Tambay, French racing driver, 66; Neil Lennon, football manager, 44; Sheridan Smith OBE, actress, 34; Jamie Redknapp, TV football pundit and former England internationalist, 42; Lucy Benjamin, actress, 45; Phil Jupitus, comedian, actor, 53.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1870 Robert Erskine Childers, author (Riddle of the Sands) and Irish nationalist; 1894 Hermann Oberth, rocket pioneer; 1900 Earl Mountbatten of Burma, admiral and commander; 1903 Eric Blair (George Orwell), novelist (Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four) ; 1906 Roger Livesey, actor; 1913 Cyril Fletcher, comedian; 1918 PH Newby, novelist; 1924 Sidney Lumet, American film director.

Deaths: 1634 John Marston, playwright and satirist; 1767 Georg Telemann, composer; 1795 William Smellie, printer and antiquary; 1876 Colonel George Armstrong Custer, in battle with Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at Little Big Horn; 1897 Margaret Oliphant, author; 1968 Tony Hancock, comedy actor; 1997 Jacques Cousteau, underwater explorer and inventor of aqualung; 2009 Farrah Fawcett, actress; 2009 Michael Jackson, pop singer; 2010 Alan Plater CBE, scriptwriter (Z Cars); 2011 Margaret Tyzack OBE, British actress; 2014 Nigel Calder, science writer.