On this day: Steve Fossett flies balloon solo

Steve Fossett became the first person to fly a balloon solo around the world. He went missing in 2008. Picture: AFP/Getty

1266: By the Treaty of Perth, Norway renounced its claim on the Hebrides.

1644: Scottish forces under David Leslie helped the victory of the Parliamentary forces over Royalists at the Battle of Marston Moor near York. The Cromwellian victory under Prince Rupert was the turning point in the Civil War.

1645: The Marquis of Montrose defeated Lieutenant-General Baillie at the Battle of Alford, in which Lord Gordon was killed.

1681: The Earl of Shaftesbury was arrested for high treason. The Grand Jury threw out the charges but, upon release, he feared further arrest and fled to the Netherlands.

1687: King James II disbanded parliament.

1843: An alligator fell from the sky during a thunderstorm in Charleston, Sough Carolina.

1865: Former Methodist minister William Booth and his wife Catherine founded the Salvation Army, initially known as the East London Christian Mission.

1881: James Garfield, 20th United States president, was shot by Charles Guiteau in Washington DC. He died on 19 September.

1900: The second Olympic Games opened in Paris.

1900: Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin flew his first airship from a field on the outskirts of Berlin.

1928: By the Representation of the People Act, the British parliament reduced the age at which women could vote to 21.

1937: Aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan disappeared over the Pacific Ocean during an attempted circumnavigation of the globe.

1940: Adolf Hitler ordered the invasion of Britain (Operation Sealion).

1940: The Vichy government was formed after the collapse of France, with Henri Pétain as head of state.

1940: More than 440 interned Italians, many from families settled in Scotland, drowned when a German submarine sank British prison ship Arandora Star on her way to Canada.

1966: France exploded an atomic bomb at a Pacific atoll in the first of a series of six tests.

1968: An Israeli Al Al airliner, flying from Rome to Tel Aviv, was hijacked and diverted to Algeria by three armed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

1971: The Erskine Bridge over the River Clyde was opened.

1990: Failure of a ventilation system in the pedestrian tunnel linking holy city of Mecca and tent city caused a stampede in which 1,400 pilgrims died.

2001: Barry George was jailed for life at the Old Bailey for the murder of the television presenter Jill Dando on the doorstep of her home in west London in 1999. His conviction was judged unsafe by the Court of Appeal and was quashed in 2007. After a retrial, on 1 August, 2008, he was found not guilty and freed.

2002: Steve Fossett, an American millionaire businessman, became the first person to fly a balloon solo round the world. In February 2008, five months after he and his light aircraft went missing on a flight in Nevada, a Chicago court declared him officially dead.

2008: Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages held by Farc guerrillas, were rescued by the Colombian armed forces.

2014: Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was charged with corruption by French prosecutors.

BIRTHDAYS

Lindsay Lohan, actress, 29; Jerry Hall, actress and model, 59; Kenneth Clarke, MP, chancellor of the Exchequer 1993-7, Secretary of State for Justice, Lord Chancellor 2010-2012, 75; Peter Kay, actor and comedian, 42; Mark Kermode, film critic, 52; James Mackay, Baron Mackay of Clashfern KT, Lord High Chancellor 1987-97, 88; David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen, foreign secretary 1977-80, 77; George Simpson, Baron Simpson of Dunkeld, chief executive, Marconi 1996-2001, 73; Pierre Cardin, fashion designer, 93; Larry David, comedian, actor, Gillian Philip, Glasgow-born author, 51; Imelda Marcos, politician and widow of former Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos, 86.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1489 Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury; 1819 Thomas Anderson, Scottish chemist; 1877 Hermann Hesse, Nobel Prize-winning poet and novelist; 1903 Alec Douglas-Home, Lord Home of the Hirsel, British prime minister 1963-64; 1903 King Olav V of Norway; 1904 René Lacoste, tennis champion, businessman and shirt designer.

Deaths: 862 Saint Swithun; 1566 Nostradamus, astrologer; 1778 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosopher; 1850 Sir Robert Peel, conservative prime minister and creator of the modern police force; 1937 Amelia Earhart, aviator; 1961 Ernest Hemingway, novelist; 1973 Betty Grable, actress; 1977 Vladimir Nabokov, novelist; 1991 Lee Remick, actress; 1997 James Stewart, actor; 1999 Mario Puzo, author of The Godfather; 2010 Dame Beryl Bainbridge DBE, novelist.