On this day: King Richard III's remains found in car park

Events, birthdays and anniversaries on 12 September
Excavators at work in the Leicester car park where King Richard IIIs remains were found. Picture: PAExcavators at work in the Leicester car park where King Richard IIIs remains were found. Picture: PA
Excavators at work in the Leicester car park where King Richard IIIs remains were found. Picture: PA

1215: English king Henry II and French prince Louis signed a peace treaty.

1440: Eton College was founded by Henry VI for 25 poor and needy scholars. Prefects were warned to look out for “ill-kempt heads, unwashed faces, foul clothes”.

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1624: Dutch innovator Cornelis Drebbel demonstrated an early version of a navigable submarine to King James I and several thousand onlookers on the Thames in London. The vessel could remain underwater for three hours and travelled from Westminster to Greenwich.

1848: Switzerland adopted new constitution as a federal union with strong central government.

1879: Cleopatra’s Needle, an ancient Egyptian obelisk, 68ft 6in high in red granite, was presented to Britain and erected on the Thames Embankment.

1890: British South Africa Company founded Salisbury in Mashonaland, Rhodesia.

1895: The first successful controlled glider flight in Britain was made by Percy Sinclair Pilcher at Wallacetown Farm, Cardross, when he rose 12ft in a 45lb monoplane he built himself.

1910: First policewoman was appointed – Alice Wells of the Los Angeles police department.

1935: The American multi-millionaire Howard Hughes achieved the first of several aviation records he established before going into self-enforced seclusion. He flew a plane of his own design at 352.46mph.

1940: Four teenage boys followed their dog down a tunnel hidden in woods near Lascaux in the Dordogne region of France, and discovered 17,000-year-old Paleolithic cave paintings. It is now a World Heritage Site.

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1944: First US troops reached German soil in Second World War.

1953: Nikita Khrushchev became first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

1959: The TV series Bonanza was first broadcast by NBC.

1960: MoT tests were introduced for cars in Britain.

1970: Concorde landed at Heathrow, London, for the first time, to a barrage of complaints about noise.

1974: Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed by leaders of the armed forces.

1979: Indonesia was struck by an earthquake measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale.

1989: Poland elected its first non-Communist government since the Second World War.

1995: Michael Hutchence of INXS pleaded guilty to punching a photographer.

2000: The Netherlands passed a law allowing same-gender marriages, divorce and adoption.

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2003: In Fallujah, US forces mistakenly shot and killed eight Iraqi police officers.

2005: Hong Kong’s Disneyland opened.

2012: Excavators announced that they may have found the remains of King Richard III buried under a car park in Leicester.

2015: Jeremy Corbyn was elected as Labour Party leader