On this day: Last ‘old style’ Beetle rolls off line

On this day in 2003, the last old style Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line in Mexico. Picture: AFP/Getty Images

1547: The Protestants responsible for the murder of Cardinal David Beaton surrendered St Andrews Castle to French forces.

1729: The city of Baltimore was founded.

1898: Will Kellogg invented corn flakes.

1900: The British parliament passed the Mines Act, the Workmen’s Compensation Act and the Railway Act.

1908: The Around the World Automobile Race, which began in New York, ended in Paris. The team from the USA, driving a Thomas Flyer, won. Only three of the six competing cars completed the race.

1909: The Wright brothers delivered the world’s first military plane to US Army Signals Corps.

1918: Provisions were included in the Scottish Education Bill to ensure adequate facilities for teaching Gaelic in Scotland.

1922: Nationalist forces captured Tipperary in Ireland.

1930: Uruguay defeated Argentina 4-2 to win football’s first World Cup.

1930: Kurds staged uprising on Persian-Turkish frontier.

1932: The tenth modern Olympic Games opened in Los Angeles.

1935: Ariel, A Life Of Shelley, by André Maurois, was the first Penguin paperback book to be published, price sixpence.

1938: Dennis the Menace made his debut as the first edition of the Beano comic went on sale.

1938: General Metaxas named himself the first premier of Greece.

1942: The German SS killed 25,000 Jews in Minsk.

1948: Emile Zatopek of Czechoslovakia clocked a new Olympic record time of 29:59.6 for the 10 kilometres.

1963: “Third Man” Kim Philby was granted asylum in the USSR after escaping arrest in Britain for spying.

1966: England won the World Cup when they defeated West Germany 4-2 at Wembley.

1971: US Apollo 15 astronauts David R Scott and James B Irwin landed on Moon.

1971: A Japanese Boeing 727 airliner collided with an F-86 fighter plane over the island of Honshu. All 162 people aboard the 727 were killed.

1973: The Thalidomide case ended after 11 years, with compensation of £20 million.

1975: US Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in Detroit. He was declared legally dead in 1982.

1984: The oil tanker Alvenus ran aground in the Gulf of Mexico, spilling 2.8 million gallons of oil.

1986: Estate agent Suzy Lamplugh vanished after lunchtime appointment with client calling himself “Mr Kipper”. Her body has never been found.

1991: Luciano Pavarotti’s 30th anniversary concert drew 125,000 people to Hyde Park, London.

1991: UN weapons experts reported finding 46,000 chemical weapons in Iraq, about four times what Baghdad had declared.

2003: In Mexico, the last “old style” Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line.

2006: The world’s longest running music show Top of the Pops was broadcast for the last time on BBC2. The show had aired for 42 years.

2008: The BBC was fined a record £400,000 by Ofcom for faking phone-in winners in competitions on Comic Relief, Children in Need, Sport Relief, the Liz Kershaw Show and the Jo Whiley Show.

BIRTHDAYS

Harriet Harman, Labour politician, 65; Paul Anka, singer and composer, 74; Peter Bogdanovich, film directo, 76; Kate Bush CBE, singer, 57; Laurence Fishburne, actor, 54; Frances de la Tour, actress, 71; Patrick Robin Archibald Boyle, 10th Earl of Glasgow, Liberal Democrat peer, 76; Jürgen Klinsmann, footballer, coach, 51; Lisa Kudrow, actress, 52; Sean Moore, drummer (Manic Street Preachers), 47; Arnold Schwarzenegger, actor, former governor of California, 68; Sir Clive Sinclair, inventor, 75; Hilary Swank, actress, 41; Daley Thompson CBE, Olympic decathlon champion, 57; Christopher Nolan, director, 45.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1818 Emily Brontë, poet and novelist (Wuthering Heights under name of Ellis Bell); 1863 Henry Ford, father of the mass-produced car; 1898 Henry Moore, sculptor; 1909 Cyril Northcote Parkinson, naval historian and author (Parkinson’s Law); 1914 Michael Morris, 3rd Baron Killanin MBE, journalist, author, sports official, president of International Olympic Committee 1972-1980.

Deaths: 1718 William Penn, Quaker leader and founder of Pennsylvania; 1875 George Pickett, US Confederate Army general; 1898 Otto von Bismarck, first chancellor of Germany 1871-1890; 1912 Mutshito, emperor of Japan; 2003 Sam Phillips, record producer and DJ, “discovered” Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash; 2007 Ingmar Bergman, film director; 2007 Michelangelo Antonioni, film director; 2012 Maeve Binchy, novelist.