On this day: Oscar Pistorius competes at London 2012

On this day in 2012, South Africas Oscar Pistorius became the first amputee to compete at the Olympic Games. Picture: Getty Images

1347: English troops captured Calais.

1693: Dom Perignon invented champagne.

1704: English and Dutch troops occupied Gibraltar during the War of the Spanish succession.

1730: Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia escaped to England.

1870: The British Red Cross was founded by Lord Wantage.

1900: An Allied expeditionary force, made up of British, French, American, Japanese and Russian troops, set off from Tientsin for Peking, to put down the Boxer Rebellion.

1903: Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto of Venice was elected Pope Pius X.

1914: German troops invaded Belgium in violation of Treaty of London. Britain declared war on Germany. Field Marshal Lord Kitchener became British minister of war; USA declared neutrality.

1917: Pravda called for the killing of all capitalists, priests and officers.

1923: The BBC first used six pips as a broadcast time signal. The sixth pip was later elongated for emphasis.

1936: Ioannis Metaxas named himself as dictator of Greece.

1942: German occupiers ordered that all Dutch homing pigeons were to be killed.

1944: German security police captured 14-year-old Anne Frank and seven other Jews in hiding places in Amsterdam during Second World War. She died in a concentration camp.

1946: An Earthquake of the magnitude 8.0 hit the Dominican Republic, resulting and 100 deaths and making 200,000 people homeless.

1956: Wilhelm Herz made the first motorcycle ride of more than 200mph when he reached 210mph.

1962: Nelson Mandela was taken into custody by South African police.

1968: The Newport Pop Festival in California was attended by 100,000 music fans.

1971: US Apollo 15 spacecraft headed back to Earth after six-day Moon exploration.

1988: Iran urged UN Security Council to condemn Iraqi chemical attack that it said injured 1,700 people in a northern village.

1990: Twelve nations of European Community banned oil imports from Iraq and Kuwait, embargoed arms and suspended most trade with Iraq.

1993: Two Los Angeles police officers were sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison over the beating of a black motorist, Rodney King.

1993: Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis signed a peace treaty in Arusha.

1994: “Tuna wars” broke out as Spanish fishermen attacked British fishing boats in the Bay of Biscay and cut their nets.

1996: Edinburgh introduced an experimental ban on cars along the shops side of Princes Street.

2002: Ten-year-old schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells went missing from the town of Soham, Cambridgeshire.

2006: The Scottish Socialist Party MSP, Tommy Sheridan, was awarded £200,000 against the News of the World for claiming that he had had affairs with several women and took part in orgies while he was married.

2007: Nasa’s Phoenix spaceship was launched.

2012: South African Oscar Pistorius became the first amputee to compete at the Olympic Games.

2013: Hassan Rouhani was inaugurated as president of Iran.

BIRTHDAYS

Barack Obama, 44th United States President, 54; Alastair Biggar, Scottish rugby player, 69; Ian Broudie, singer-guitarist (Lightning Seeds), 57; Mary Decker, American athlete, 57; Iain Ferguson, Scottish footballer, 53; Martin Jarvis OBE, actor, 74; Billy Bob Thornton, actor, 60; Martin Lambie-Nairn, designer, 70; Lee Mack, comedian, 47; Abigail Spencer, actress, 34; Antonio Valencia, footballer, 30; John Wark, former Scotland international footballer, 58; Mike Marsh, former Olympic sprint champion, 48.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1792 Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet; 1792 Edward Irving, Scottish clergyman who founded the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church (the “Irvingites”); 1821 Louis Vuitton, founder of French fashion house; 1834 John Venn, British mathematician and philosopher, inventor of Venn diagrams; 1870 Sir Harry Lauder, Scottish music hall comedian and singer; 1900 Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother; 1901 Louis Armstrong, jazz musician; 1925 Stanley Eveling, playwright, former TV critic of The Scotsman.

Deaths: 1060 Henry I, king of France; 1875 Hans Christian Andersen, fairy-tale writer; 1938 Pearl White, silent movie actress and stunt artist (The Perils of Pauline); 1976 Roy Herbert Thomson, first Lord Thomson of Fleet, newspaper publisher (including The Scotsman); 1995 J Howard Marshall, American oil tycoon, university professor and government official; 1999 Victor Mature, actor.