On this day: Potemkin mutiny | Edward IV crowned

On this day in 1905, sailors on the Russian battleship Potemkin mutinied. Picture: Hulton Archive

1461: Edward IV was crowned King of England.

1682: Champagne was invented by Dom Perignon, a blind Benedictine cellarman at Hautvilliers Abbey, France, when he discovered a way of preventing carbon dioxide from escaping during fermentation, thus creating bubbles in the wine.

1790: Forth and Clyde Canal opened.

1838: The coronation of 19-year-old Queen Victoria took place in Westminster Abbey.

1905: Russian sailors mutinied on battleship Potemkin.

1910: Westminster Cathedral was consecrated.

1919: Peace treaty between German representatives and Allied powers was signed in the Palace of Versailles, officially ending the First World War.

1930: Frank Whittle patented the jet engine.

1942: British 8th Army retreated from Germans to El Alamein in North Africa; German forces launched counter-attack against Soviets in Kharkov region.

1948: More than 200 were killed in explosion and fire at Ludwigshafen chemical works in Germany.

1964: The first word processor was introduced in the US by IBM.

1990: Reading tests on seven-year-olds in a sample of nine education authorities in England and Wales showed biggest drop in standards for more than 40 years.

1990: The Prince of Wales broke an arm in a polo accident.

1991: Earthquake measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale hit Southern California, killing two people and injuring dozens.

1991: Paul McCartney’s ‘Liverpool Oratorio’, his first venture as a “classical” composer, was heard by 2,000 people in the city’s Anglican cathedral.

1992: Britain held its first National Music Day.

1994: Germany ordered a six-month ban on British beef imports over “mad cow” disease.

1997: Boxer Mike Tyson was disqualified in the third round of his bout with Evander Holyfield after biting a piece off his opponent’s ear.

2004: Sovereign power was handed to the interim government of Iraq by the Coalition Provisional Authority, ending the US-led rule of that nation.

2008: Wendy Alexander quit as leader of Scottish Labour MSPs after Holyrood’s standards committee banned her from parliament for a day for failing to declare donations to her party leadership campaign.

BIRTHDAYS

John Cusack, actor, 48; Howard Barker, playwright and poet, 68; Correlli Barnett CBE, author and military historian, 87; Kathy Bates, actress, 66; Mel Brooks, actor, writer, producer and director, 88; Ken Buchanan, Scottish former boxer champion, 69; Sir Harold Evans, publisher, 86; Rebecca Front, actress, 49; AA (Adrian Anthony) Gill, restaurant, film and television critic, 60; Jack Gold, film director, 84; Mary Stuart Masterson, actress, 48.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1491 King Henry VIII of England; 1577 Sir Peter Rubens, painter; 1712 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writer and philosopher; 1867 Luigi Pirandello, novelist and dramatist; 1902 Richard Rodgers, composer, lyricist; 1918 Viscount Whitelaw, politician.

Deaths: 1836 James Madison, fourth US president; 1855 Lord Raglan, commander of the Expeditionary Force in Crimean War; 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand; 1915 Victor Trumper, cricketer; 1958 Alfred Noyes, poet.