On this day: US plane crashed into Empire State Building

On this day in 1945 a US Army B-25 bomber crashed into the Empire State Building, setting it ablaze and killing 13 people. Picture: Getty

National day of Peru.

1586: The first potatoes arrived at Plymouth, brought from Colombia by Sir Thomas Harriot.

1809: The Battle of Talavera in the Peninsular War ended, with the Duke of Wellington victorious over French Marshal Soult.

1868: The East Coast War broke out in New Zealand.

1914: Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, signalling start of First World War.

1917: The formation of the Royal Tank Corps was authorised.

1928: The ninth Olympic Games opened in Amsterdam.

1938: The British liner Mauretania was launched at Birkenhead, Merseyside.

1945: US Army B-25 bomber crashed into Empire State Building in New York City, setting it ablaze and killing 13 people.

1956: A US B-47 bomber crashed at Lakenheath Air Base, Suffolk, and damaged three atom bombs. It was hushed up for 23 years.

1965: Edward Heath became leader of the Conservative Party.

1967: The steel industry was renationalised.

1976: Britain severed relations with government of Uganda’s president, Idi Amin.

1976: One of the greatest natural disasters of recent centuries occurred when an earthquake hit Tangshan in China, killing more than 800,000 people.

1977: Ian Botham made his debut in Test cricket when he played against Australia at Trent Bridge.

1984: The 23rd Olympic Games opened in Los Angeles.

1987: Laura Davis became the first British golfer to win the US Women’s Open.

1988: Paddy Ashdown, a former commando aged 47, was elected as leader of the new Social and Liberal Democrats.

1990: After a coup attempt in Trinidad and Tobago, Muslim rebels held the prime minister hostage.

1991: At Westminster, the Tories named and demanded the purging of 27 Labour MPs who, they alleged, supported the Militant Tendency.

1993: Mike Atherton, of Lancashire, was appointed England cricket captain.

2001: Australian Ian Thorpe became the first swimmer to win six gold medals at a single World Championships.

2005: The Provisional Irish Republican Army called an end to its 30-year-long terrorist campaign in Northern Ireland.

BIRTHDAYS

Ian McCaskill, former television weatherman, 74; Elizabeth Berkley, actress, 42; Alan Brownjohn, poet, novelist and critic, 83; Michael Carrick, footballer, 33; Dustin Milligan, actor, 29; Ricardo Muti, conductor, 73; Sir Garfield Sobers, cricketer, 78; Doug Walker, Inverness-born former sprinter, 41; Jim Davis, cartoonist (Garfield), 69; George Cummings, guitarist (Dr Hook and the Medicine Show), 76.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1844 Gerard Manley Hopkins, poet and Jesuit priest; 1866 Beatrix Potter, author and illustrator; 1887 Marcel Duchamp, artist, sculptor, writer; 1904 Lord Selwyn-Lloyd, politician; 1929 Jacqueline Onassis, former US first lady; 1954 Hugo Chavez president of Venezuela.

Deaths: 1057 Pope Victor II; 1540 Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex; 1655 Cyrano de Bergerac, novelist and playwright; 1741 Antonio Vivaldi, violinist and composer; 1750 Johann Sebastian Bach, composer; 1794 Maximilien de Robespierre, French Revolution leader; 1865 Dr Edward Pritchard, poisoner (last public hanging in Scotland); 1916 Henry James, writer; 2004 Francis Crick,

co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.