On this day: IRA bomb threats stopped the Grand National

1997: IRA bomb threats stopped the Grand National and 70,000 spectators were evacuated from Aintree. Picture: Allsport

1603: King James VI left Scotland for his new kingdom of England.

1614: The Addled Parliament began – and was dissolved on 7 June without having passed a bill – hence its name.

1793: Plan for the building of the Capitol, Washington DC, was accepted.

1794: French revolutionary leaders Georges-Jacques Danton and Camille Desmoulins were guillotined.

1881: Britain concluded Treaty of Pretoria with Boers, recognising independence of South African Republic of Transvaal.

1902: The stand at Ibrox Park stadium in Glasgow collapsed during an England versus Scotland match, killing 20 spectators and injuring more than 200.

1910: Kissing was banned on French railways.

1916: Military Medal introduced in First World War for forces fighting on Western Front.

1939: All German children between ages of ten and 13 were ordered to serve in Hitler Youth Organisation.

1955: Sir Winston Churchill resigned as prime minister, aged 80.

1958: Fidel Castro began “total war” against Batista government in Cuba.

1966: Corporation tax brought into force by Harold Wilson’s Labour government.

1968: Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth was sold to an American syndicate for $3,230,000.

1971: Mrs Fran Phipps became the first woman to reach the North Pole.

1988: Arabic-speaking hijackers commandeered Kuwaiti Airways plane with 112 people aboard and forced it to land in Iran.

1989: The lighthouse at Fastnet, off County Cork, was computerised, ending almost 150 years of human habitation.

1990: King Baudouin I resumed the Belgian throne after a 36-hour abdication rather than sign a law legalising abortion.

1991: In Manchester, terrorists planted 12 firebombs in the city’s main shopping precinct.

1994: The Archbishop of Canterbury, Doctor George Carey, made an outspoken attack on the state of modern Britain, condemning “a pretty ordinary little nation”.

1997: IRA bomb threats stopped the Grand National and 70,000 spectators were evacuated from Aintree. The race was run two days later.

2004: Cartoon character Oor Wullie was named as Scotland’s top icon, ahead of William Wallace and Sir Sean Connery.

2009: North Korea launched its controversial Kwangmyongsong-2 rocket. The satellite passed over mainland Japan, which prompted an immediate reaction from the United Nations Security Council.

2010: 115 Chinese miners trapped in the flooded Wangjialing mine in Shanxi province for more than a week were rescued and brought to the surface.

Births: 1588 Thomas Hobbes, philosopher; 1827 Lord Lister, pioneer of disinfection and antiseptics in surgery; 1894 Chesney Allan, member of the Crazy Gang; 1900 Spencer Tracy, American film actor; 1908 Bette Davis, American actress; 1909 Albert (Cubby) Broccoli, film producer; 1916 Gregory Peck, film actor; 1920 Arthur Hailey, novelist; 1922 Sir Tom Finney OBE, English footballer; 1929 Sir Nigel Hawthorne, actor.

Deaths: 1811 Robert Raikes, founder of the Sunday School movement; 1884 John Wisden, cricketer and compiler of record books; 1923 Earl of Carnarvon, Egyptologist; 1964 Gen Douglas MacArthur, Second World War commander in the Pacific; 1976 Howard Hughes, multi-millionaire recluse industrialist; 1984 Sir Arthur Harris, former chief of Bomber Command; 2006 Gene Pitney, country and western singer; 2008 Charlton Heston, actor; 2014 Alan Davie CBE, Grangemouth-born artist.