On this day: Jacqueline Kennedy married Aristotle Onassis

Events, birthdays and anniversaries for 20 October
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, widow of assassinated president John F Kennedy, married Aristotle Onassis on this day in 1968. Picture: APJacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, widow of assassinated president John F Kennedy, married Aristotle Onassis on this day in 1968. Picture: AP
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, widow of assassinated president John F Kennedy, married Aristotle Onassis on this day in 1968. Picture: AP

1818: The 49th parallel was established by the US and Britain as the boundary between Canada and the United States.

1922: Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy.

1941: The keel of Britain’s largest and last battleship, Vanguard, was laid at Clydebank. She was launched on 30 November, 1944.

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1945: Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon warned US that creation of Jewish state could lead to war; Arab League was formed.

1960: DH Lawrence’s novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928) took Penguin Books to the dock at the Old Bailey under the Obscene Publications Act. Penguin was found not guilty.

1968: Jacqueline Kennedy – widow of President John F Kennedy – and shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis were married on his privately-owned island of Skorpios in the Ionian Sea.

1973: The Sydney Opera House was opened by the Queen.

1977: Civilian government in Thailand was ousted in bloodless coup by military junta which had installed it a year earlier.

1987: Legal history was made at the Old Bailey when a teenage girl gave evidence in a sex abuse case from behind a screen.

1988: The Sengstack family of New Jersey sold their company’s outright ownership of the song, Happy Birthday To You, which they had sung for 50 years.

1988: The government came under pressure to recognise a moral responsibility towards 18,000 investors who lost savings in the collapse of the investment firm Barlow Clowes International.

1991: At Wentworth, Severiano Ballesteros won the world matchplay golf championship for the fifth time.

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1994: John Major’s government was rocked by a second “cash for questions” scandal in which the Northern Ireland minister, Tim Smith, resigned.

1995: The Scottish Secretary, Michael Forsyth, announced a plan to encourage Highland crofters to buy thousands of acres of land owned by the Scottish Office.

1997: Elton John’s funeral service tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, Candle in the Wind 97, was declared the biggest-selling single in music history.

2007: South Africa beat England, the holders, 15-6 in the World Rugby Cup final in Paris.

2011: Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi was killed in Sirte.

BIRTHDAYS

Viggo Mortensen, actor, 56; Tom Petty, musician, 64; Ian Rush, former footballer, 53; Snoop Dogg, rapper, 43; Allan Donald, cricketer and coach, 48; Mark King, musician (Level 42), 56; Dannii Minogue, singer and television presenter, 43; Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, showman and conservationist, 88; The Hon Emma Christina Tennant FRSL, writer, 77; Susan Tully, actress, director, producer, 46; Timothy West CBE, actor and director, 80; Chris Cowdrey, cricketer, 57; Danny Boyle, film director, 58; Paul Wilson, musician (Snow Patrol), 36; Norman Blake, musician (Teenage Fanclub), 49; Sir Ken Morrison CBE, supermarket magnate, 83.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1632 Sir Christopher Wren, architect and astronomer; 1854 Arthur Rimbaud, poet; 1891 James Chadwick, Nobel Prize-winning discoverer of the neutron; 1938 Kathy Kirby, singer.

Deaths: 1842 Grace Darling, renowned for saving the shipwrecked crew of the Forfarshire in 1838; 1935 Arthur Henderson, Glasgow-born, first Labour Cabinet minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner; 1989 Anthony Quayle, actor; 1994 Burt Lancaster, actor.