On this day: Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream…” speech

On this day in 1963 Martin Luther King made his famous "I have a dream..." speech at a rally of 200,000 people in Washington. Picture: Getty

1413: Bull of Pope Benedict XIII (of Avignon) ratifying the founding of St Andrews University.

1833: Parliament banned slavery throughout British Empire.

1841: Sir Robert Peel succeeded Lord Melbourne as prime minister for his second term.

1895: RL Thomas, secretary and treasurer of Kinestoscope Co of New Jersey, became the first film actor, playing the part of the Queen in The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots.

1914: Battle of Heligoland Bight was fought.

1917: The Order of the British Empire (OBE) and the Companion of Honour (CH) were awarded for the first time.

1931: Ramsay MacDonald was ousted as Labour leader after joining national government. He was succeeded by Arthur Henderson.

1945: American forces under General George Marshall landed in Japan.

1961: Fishbourne Roman palace was discovered near Chichester by archaeologists from Oxford. Finds included the earliest known Roman mosaics in Britain.

1963: Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King made his famous “I have a dream…” speech to a rally of 200,000 people in Washington.

1967: Britain’s hippie movement held its great Festival of the Flower Children at Woburn Abbey, Buckinghamshire.

1978: The deputy keeper of the Tate Gallery and an art historian announced that they would publish a paper demonstrating that a number of oil paintings, sketches and water colours attributed to John Constable were the work of members of his family.

1986: Bolivian government imposed nationwide state of siege in response to march to La Paz by about 7,000 miners opposed to closing of mines.

1988: Thirty-three died when three Italian air force jets collided during an aerobatics display at Ramstein in Western Germany. About 500 people were injured.

1989: Police said masked Sikh gunmen raided a passenger train in India’s Punjab State and massacred at least 22 Hindu passengers.

1990: Kuwait declared 19th province of Iraq.

1990: Ernest Saunders was jailed for five years, Gerald Ronson for a year and fined £5m and Anthony Parnes was jailed for two-and-a-half years in the Guinness trial. Sir Jack Lyons, also convicted, was later fined £2m.

1992: All 82 people aboard an Aeroflot airliner died in a crash north-east of Moscow.

1995: More than 30 people were killed when Bosnian Serbs shelled the centre of Sarajevo, hitting market shoppers.

1996: The 15-year marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales was formally ended when they were granted a decree absolute in London.

2003: An electricity blackout cut off power to around 500,000 people living in south east England and brought 60 per cent of London’s underground rail network to a halt.

2005: Hurricane Katrina began to make landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi in the afternoon, and brought the most severe damage to Slidell and New Orleans.

2007: Two companies who owned the Stockline plastics factory in Maryhill, Glasgow, in which nine people died in an explosion in 2004, were fined £400,000. Relatives of the dead and 33 injured said the fine was an “insult”.

BIRTHDAYS

Billy Boyd, Scottish actor, 47; Kim Appleby, singer, 54; Jack Black, actor, 46; Imogen Cooper CBE, concert pianist, 66; Hugh Cornwell, rock singer (The Stranglers), 66; Windsor Davies, British actor, 85; David Fincher, film director, 53; Bob Langley, author and broadcaster, 76; Jamie Osborne, jockey, 48; Jason Priestley, actor and director, 46; LeAnn Rimes, singer, 33; Emma Samms, actress, 55; David Soul, singer and actor, 72; Shania Twain, country music singer, 50.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1749 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, novelist and scientist; 1828 Count Leo Tolstoy, novelist and philosopher; 1833 Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Pre-Raphaelite painter; 1840 Ira Sankey, hymn writer; 1894 Karl Böhm, conductor; 1896 Liam O’Flaherty, novelist; 1906 Sir John Betjeman, Poet Laureate 1972-84; 1913 Lord Cudlipp, journalist; 1915 Max Robertson, radio sports commentator; 1921 Dan Stephen, Aberdeen-born artist; 1930 Ben Gazzara, actor; 1931 John Shirley-Quirk CBE, bass-baritone; 1937 12th Duke of Argyll.

Deaths: 1805 Alexander Carlyle, Scottish church leader; 1811 John Leyden, physician and poet; 1859 Leigh Hunt, essayist and poet; 1958 Ernest Lawrence, physicist; 1967 Charles Darrow, inventor of Monopoly; 1972 Prince William of Gloucester; 1987 John Huston, film director; 1990 Patience Strong, writer; 2001 Sir Reo Stakis, hotelier; 2006 Ed Benedict, animator (Yogi Bearand The Flintstones).