On this day: Zsa Zsa Gabor begins jail sentence

On this day in 1990 Zsa Zsa Gabor began a three-day jail sentence for slapping a policeman in the face. Picture: AFP/Getty Images

1563: The French army recaptured Le Havre from the English.

1586: Sir Walter Raleigh brought the first tobacco to England from Virginia.

1643: Oliver Cromwell defeated the royalist forces at the Battle of Gainsborough.

1689: Battle of Killiecrankie, in which Williamite forces, under the Whig General Mackay, were routed by the Jacobites led by John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, who received fatal injuries.

1694: The Bank of England was granted a 12-year charter by an Act of Parliament.

1760: Scottish School of Design founded. It became the Royal Institution, now the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh.

1794: The Thermidorian Coup took place during the French Revolution, bringing about the fall and execution of Robespierre.

1816: US troops destroyed Fort Apalachicola, a Seminole fort, to punish the native Indians for harbouring runaway slaves.

1836: Adelaide, in south Australia, was founded.

1839: Opium War between China and Britain began after Chinese authorities seized and burned British cargoes of opium.

1839: Chartist riots broke out in Birmingham.

1866: A telegraph cable, 1,686 miles long, was successfully laid across the Atlantic Ocean.

1890: Vincent Van Gogh went to the spot where he had painted Cornfield with Flight of Birds, and shot himself. He died two days later, in Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris, aged 37. In his lifetime he had sold only four paintings.

1917: The allies reached the Yser Canal at the Battle of Passchendaele

1921: The first insulin was isolated by Canadians Sir Frederick Banting and his assistant Charles Best, at the University of Toronto, providing an effective treatment for diabetes.

1933: Assyrian Christians were massacred in Iraq.

1942: The first Battle of El Alamein ended after 27 days, with the army, under Auchinleck, having held the German and Italian forces and prevented their advance into Egypt.

1944: Gloster Meteor, Britain’s first jet fighter and the Allies’ first operational jet fighter of the Second World War, made its first operational flight.

1948: Don Bradman scored his 29th and last Test century, playing for Australia against England at Headingley.

1953: Korean Armistice was signed at Panmunjom, dividing the north and the south into two countries.

1962: Mariner 2, an American space probe to Venus, was launched.

1964: Sir Winston Churchill made his last appearance in the House of Commons.

1962: Martin Luther King was jailed in Albany, Georgia.

1969: Irishman Tom McClean, of the Parachute Regiment, arrived in County Mayo after rowing solo across the Atlantic for 71 days from St John’s in a 20ft boat.

1990: The World Health Organisation said Aids was the main cause of death for women between 20 and 40 years of age.

1990: Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor began a three-day jail sentence for slapping a policeman.

1993: Five people were killed when the Mafia set off bombs at historical and cultural sites in Rome and Florence, including the Uffizi gallery.

1996: In Atlanta, Georgia, a pipe bomb exploded at Centennial Olympic Park during the Summer Olympics. One woman was killed, and 111 were injured.

2011: On the eve of announcing profits of nearly £300 million, British Gas was fined £2.5m for failing to deal with customers’ complaints properly.

2013: One hundred people were killed and 1,500 injured during a crackdown on protesters in Cairo, Egypt.

BIRTHDAYS

Roseanna Cunningham, MSP, minister for community safety and legal affairs, 64; Allan Border, cricketer and commentator, 60; Anna Dawson, actress, 78; Christopher Dean OBE, ice skater, 57; Jo Durie, tennis player, coach and commentator, 55; Bobbie Gentry, singer, 71; Jack Higgins, novelist, 86; Barbara Thompson MBE, saxophonist, 71; Baroness (Shirley) Williams of Crosby, co-founder, Social Democratic Party, 85; Jordan Spieth, golfer, 22; Peggy Fleming, three-time world champions figure skater and commentator, 67.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1824 Alexandre Dumas fils, playwright; 1870 Hilaire Belloc, writer and poet; 1882, Donald Crisp, Scottish actor; 1882 Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, aircraft designer and manufacturer; 1900 Charles Vidor, film director.

Deaths: 432 Celestine I, Italian pope; 1876 Walter Channing, physician, first to use anaesthetic during childbirth; 1946 Gertrude Stein, novelist and poet; 1980 Shah of Iran; 1984 James Mason, film actor; 2000 Peter Keenan, boxer and promoter; 2003 Bob Hope, comic actor.