On this day: SFA Formed | Pluto & Uranus found

On this day 79 years ago the first driving test in Britain was introduced. Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

1567: Margaret of Parma, Regent of the Netherlands, used German mercenaries to annihilate 2,000 Calvinists.

1781: Amateur astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus – 1,783 million miles from the Sun. Herschel lived to be 84, the number of Earth years it takes for Uranus to orbit the Sun.

1873: Scottish Football Association formed with constituent clubs Queen’s Park, Clydesdale, Vale of Leven, Dumbreck, Third Lanark, Eastern, Granville, and Kilmarnock.

1881: Alexander II, Tsar of Russia, was assassinated when a bomb was thrown at him near his palace.

1918: MPs voted to raise the school-leaving age to 14.

1925: MPs approved Summer Time Bill, making daylight saving permanent.

1930: Discovery of planet Pluto was announced by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory, Arizona, although its existence had been predicted earlier by Percival Lowell.

1935: The driving test was introduced in Britain. It became compulsory three months later.

1938: Nazi Germany invaded Austria. It was declared part of the German Reich (the Anschluss) under the name of Ostmark.

1942: British bombers staged saturation raid on German city of Cologne.

1944: HMS Thunderbolt, the new name of the salvaged submarine Thetis, was sunk off Sicily.

1967: Peasant rioting was reported in China.

1972: Clifford Irving admitted to a New York Court that he had fabricated Howard Hughes’s autobiography after receiving a $750,000 advance from his publishers. He had hoped the reclusive millionaire would not venture into the public limelight to denounce him.

1992: Pravda, for eight decades the official newspaper of the Communist Party, suspended publication due to lack of funds.

1996: Thomas Hamilton shot dead 16 children and a teacher at their Dunblane primary school, then turned the gun on himself.

2003: 350,000-year-old footprints of an upright-walking human have been found in Italy, according to the journal Nature.

2013: Jorge Mario Bergoglio, from Argentina, was elected the 266th Pope, and would be known as “Pope Francis”. He was the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas and the first from the Southern Hemisphere.

BIRTHDAYS

Cillian Murphy, actor, 38; Baroness Amos, Leader of the House of Lords 2003-7, 60; Gordon Borrie, Baron Borrie, QC, Labour Party life peer and director-general of Fair Trading 1976-92, 83; Joe Bugner, boxer, 64; Sir Michael Checkland, director-general, BBC 1987-92, 78; Adam Clayton, musician (U2), 54; William H Macy, actor, director and writer, 64; Dave Mattacks, British rock drummer (Fairport Convention), 66; Neil Sedaka, singer and songwriter, 75; Candi Staton, singer, 74.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1733 Joseph Priestley, clergyman and scientist who discovered gases, notably oxygen; 1906 Oscar Nemon, sculptor; 1913 Sir Reo Stakis, hotelier; 1917 Sir Robert Mark GBE, commissioner, Metropolitan Police 1972-7; 1921 Gitta Sereny CBE, historian and author.

Deaths: 1901 Benjamin Harrison, 23rd US president; 1906 Susan Anthony, leader of women’s suffrage in America; 1933 Robert Innes, Scottish astronomer who discovered Proxima Centauri; 1957 John Middleton Murry, author; 1990 Jane Grigson, cookery writer.