On this day: QE2 returned from the Falklands

1488: Battle of Sauchieburn between James III and the confederate nobles supporting his son. The king was murdered in his flight.

1509: Henry VIII married the Spanish Princess Catherine of Aragon, the first of his six wives.

1679: Royal troops under Claverhouse were defeated by Covenanters at Battle of Drumclog.

1727: George II was proclaimed king of Great Britain.

1891: Britain and Portugal signed further convention of territories north and south of Zambesi; Portugal assigned Barotseland to Britain and Nysaland became a British protectorate.

1900: Edward VII’s (then Prince of Wales) first car – a chocolate, black and red 6bhp Daimler – was delivered to the Royal stables at Ascot Heath House. In 1930, George V gave the car back to Daimler, who presented it to Queen Elizabeth in 1968.

1930: The liner Empress of Britain was launched by the Prince of Wales at Clydebank.

1936: Leslie Mitchell became the BBC’s first television announcer.

1952: Len Hutton became first professional cricketer to captain England.

1955: Eighty-two spectators were killed when a car skidded off the track at Le Mans 24-hour car race.

1963: Greek premier Constantine Caramanlis resigned in protest at King Paul’s state visit to Britain.

1969: Soviet and Chinese troops clashed on Sinkiang border.

1975: The first oil was pumped ashore from the North Sea oil fields.

1981: NatWest Tower opened in London – at the time it was the tallest building in Europe.

1981: Earthquake in south-east Iran killed at least 1,500.

1982: The QE2 returned to Southampton from the Falklands with survivors from three destroyed British warships.

1988: Syrian-backed dissidents battled with loyalists of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at two devastated refugee camps in west Beirut.

1990: Israeli Knesset approved new government formed by prime minister Yitzhak Shamir.

1995: Gavin Hastings played his 61st and last match for Scotland, in a 48-30 World Cup quarter-final defeat by New Zealand in Pretoria. He was captain 20 times.

2001: Timothy McVeigh was executed by lethal injection six years after he blew up the Alfred P Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children.

2001: Tony Blair sacked 20 ministers, including Robin Cook, the foreign secretary, in a ruthless reshuffle after his general election victory.

2002: Antonio Meucci was acknowledged as the first inventor of the telephone by the United States Congress.

2004: Cassini-Huygens made its closest fly-by of the Saturn moon Phoebe.

2008: Canadian premier Stephen Harper made a historic official apology to Canada’s First Nations about a residential school abuse in which children were isolated from their homes, families and cultures for a century.

2009: An Australian passenger plane with 203 people on board was forced into an emergency landing after a fire broke out in the cockpit.

BIRTHDAYS

Sir Jackie Stewart OBE, Milton-born world motor racing champion, 75; Jean Alesi, racing driver, 50; Kenneth John Cameron, Baron Cameron of Lochbroom, Lord Advocate 1984-89, 83; Athol Fugard, South African actor, director and playwright, 82; Jane Goldman, author and television producer, 44; Dame Beryl Grey DBE, prima ballerina, Sadler’s Wells Ballet 1941-57, 87; Baroness Heyhoe-Flint OBE, cricketer and broadcaster, 74; Joshua Jackson, actor, 36; Shia LaBeouf, actor, 28; Hugh Laurie OBE, actor, comedian and writer, 55; Lynsey de Paul, singer, 66; Jenny Pitman, racehorse trainer and author, 68; Caroline Quentin, actress, 54; David Quilter, actor, 72; Gene Wilder, actor, writer, producer and director, 81.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1572 Ben Jonson, dramatist and poet; 1776 John Constable, landscape painter; 1776 Mrs Humphrey Ward, novelist; 1847 Dame Millicent G Fawcett, suffragette; 1864 Richard Strauss, composer; 1910 Jacques Cousteau, underwater explorer and inventor of aqualung; 1919 Richard Todd OBE, actor; 1926 Frank Carson, comedian.

Deaths: 1292: Roger Bacon, philosopher and education reformer; 1488 James III, King of Scotland 1460-88 (murdered after Battle of Sauchieburn); 1696 Francis Keith, mercenary; 1696 Dugald Stewart, philosopher; 1847 Sir John Franklin, Arctic explorer; 1967 “Bombardier” Billy Wells, heavyweight boxer; 1970 Alexander Kerensky, Soviet political leader overthrown by Bolsheviks in 1917; 1979 John Wayne, actor; 1998 Dame Catherine Cookson, novelist; 2013 Henry Cecil, racehorse trainer.