On this day: Rangers signed Roman Catholic Maurice Johnson

Events, birthdays and anniversaries for 10 July

In 1989 Rangers manager Graeme Souness, right, signed Maurice Johnson, the clubs first well-known Roman Catholic player. Picture: SNS

988: The city of Dublin was founded on the banks of the river Liffey.

1040: Lady Godiva rode naked on horseback through Coventry to force her husband, the Earl of Mercia, to reduce taxes.

1460: Richard of York defeated King Henry VIII ay Northampton in the Wars of the Roses.

1533: Lady Jane Grey began her brief reign as the Queen of England.

1579: The first Bible to be printed in Scotland was published.

1584: William of Orange was assassinated by Balthazar Gérard at instigation of Spain.

1645: Oliver Cromwell’s army defeated Royalists at Langport.

1884: England and Australia met on the first day of Test cricket to be played at Old Trafford, Manchester. Play was washed out by rain.

1918: The Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic was formed.

1919: President Woodrow Wilson delivered the Treaty of Versailles to the US senate.

1924: Denmark took possession of Greenland as Norway ended its claim on the territory.

1925: The USSR’s news agency TASS was formed.

1938: Howard Hughes flew around the world in 91 hours.

1940: Battle of Britain began following attacks on shipping convoys in the English Channel by Nazi forces.

1942: Heinrich Himmler ordered the sterilisation of all Jewish women in Ravensbruck camp.

1950: Soap rationing in Britain, started during the war, ended.

1951: Randolph Turpin became the first British boxer to win the world middleweight championship when he defeated American Sugar Ray Robinson at Earls Court, London.

1962: Telstar I, the world’s first television telecommunications satellite, was launched in America.

1962: The US performed an atmospheric nuclear test on Christmas Island.

1996: The US launched Orbiter I to the moon.

1971: Golfer Lee Trevino won the 100th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale.

1973: The Bahamas declared independence from UK and adopted its constitution.

1980: The Alexandra Palace in London burned down.

1985: Two explosions sank the Greenpeace campaign ship Rainbow Warrior, in Auckland, New Zealand.

1985: Playboy and Penthouse magazines published nude photographs of Madonna.

1989: Rangers manager Graeme Souness caused a major stir when he signed former Celtic player Maurice Johnson, who became the Ibrox club’s first well-known Roman Catholic player.

1990: Uefa, the European football governing body, unconditionally readmitted English clubs, except Liverpool, to European competition from which they had been banned after the Heysel Stadium riot in 1985.

1991: Boris Yeltsin was sworn in as the first elected president of the Russian Federation.

1997: In London scientists reported the findings of the DNA analysis of a neanderthal skeleton which support the “out of Africa theory” of human evolution placing an “African Eve” at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

2000: A leaking southern Nigerian petroleum pipeline exploded, killing about 250 villagers scavenging gasoline.

2011: The last edition of the News of the World was published in the wake of phone-hacking allegations.

BIRTHDAYS

Virginia Wade OBE, Wimbledon champion 1977 and commentator, 70; Winnie Ewing, MEP 1975-99 and MSP 1999-03, 86; Sir Thomas Farmer CBE, founder of Kwik-Fit, 75; John Motson OBE, sports commentator, 70; John Simm, actor, 45; Dr Gavin Strang, MP (1970-2010), 72; Neil Tennant, singer (Pet Shop Boys), 61; Perrie Edwards, singer (Little Mix), 22; Jake LaMotta, former world middleweight boxing champion, 94; Arlo Guthrie, American folk singer, 68; Jason Orange, singer-songwriter, 45; Imelda May, Irish musician singer-songwriter, 41; Chiwetel Ejiofor CBE, actor, director, writer, 38.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1509 John Calvin (born Jean Cauvin), theologian; 1802 Robert Chambers, bookseller and publisher; 1830 Camille Pissarro, painter; 1834 James McNeill Whistler, etcher and painter; 1856 Nikola Tesla, inventor of alternating current electricity supply system; 1871 Marcel Proust, writer; 1917 Reg Smythe, cartoonist (“Andy Capp”); 1919 Lord Mackie of Benshie CBE, MP 1964-66, chairman, Scottish Liberal Party 1983-88; 1926 1934 Jerry Nelson, American puppeteer (The Muppet Show); 1943 Arthur Ashe, tennis champion.

Deaths: 138AD Hadrian, Roman Emperor; 649 Li Shimin, emperor of China; 1099 El Cid, Spanish patriot; 1806 George Stubbs, painter; 1910 Johann G Galle, discoverer of planet Neptune; 1989 Tommy Trinder, comedian; 1989 Mel Blanc cartoon voice.