On this day: 13 protest marchers killed on Bloody Sunday

Bloody Sunday in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, when 13 protest marchers were killed. Picture: Contributed

1641: Portuguese surrendered Malacca in Malaya to the Dutch.

1647: Scots handed over King Charles I to parliamentary forces.

1790: The first purpose-built lifeboat, named The Original, launched at South Shields on the River Tyne.

1840: Emperor of China forbade all trade with Britain.

1857: The naval uniform for ratings in the Royal Navy was authorised.

1889: Crown Prince Archduke Rudolf of Austria and his lover, Baroness Marie Vetsera, 17, were found dead at the royal hunting lodge of Mayerling, near Vienna. It was never properly determined whether it was a double suicide or murder.

1902: Britain signed treaty with Japan providing for independence of China and Korea.

1933: Adolf Hitler was appointed German chancellor by president Paul von Hindenburg.

1957: United Nations called on South Africa to reconsider its apartheid policy.

1965: State funeral of Sir Winston Churchill. Big Ben was silenced and his body was taken for burial in Bladon churchyard in a Battle of Britain Class locomotive 34051, named Winston Churchill.

1972: Bloody Sunday in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, when 13 protest marchers were killed by British paratroopers.

1972: Pakistan left the British Commonwealth.

1990: Weightlifter Ricky Chaplin of Wales was stripped of his Commonwealth Games gold medal after a positive drugs test.

1990: Nineteen seamen were lost when the freighter Flag Theofana sank in the English Channel.

1991: American and Iraqi troops clashed in first ground battle of Gulf war at Khafji, as Iraqi tanks probed Kuwait-Saudi border.

1992: Estate agent Stephanie Slater was released after being held captive for eight days by a kidnapper. A £175,000 ransom was paid.

1996: Islanders on Eigg called on their landlord, German artist Marlin Eckhard Maruma, to fulfil his promise to invest £15million in the island or get out.

1997: Les Woodcock, a Bradford University professor, who took 23 years to work out an equation, admitted that it was “no use whatsoever”. He discovered that a hexagonal close-packed lattice is less stable than a crystal-face, centred cubic lattice.

2000: Off the coast of Ivory Coast, Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 169.

2011: Scottish tennis player Andy Murray lost his third grand slam final, this one in Australia in straight sets to Novak Djokovic.

ANNIVERSARIES:

Births: 1775 Walter Savage Landor, writer; 1871 Sir Seymour Hicks, actor-manager; 1882 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd US President; 1899 Lord Bernstein, founder of Granada Group; 1913 Percy Thrower, gardener and broadcaster; 1957 Payne Stewart, golfer.

Deaths: 1606 Sir Everard Digby, Thomas Winter, John Grant and Thomas Bates, Guy Fawkes plotters (hung, drawn and quartered); 1649 Charles I (beheaded for treason); 1888 1889: Crown Prince Archduke Rudolf of Austria; 1948 Mahatma Gandhi, Indian political and religious leader (assassinated); 1948 Orville Wright, flight pioneer; 1982 Stanley Holloway, actor and singer; 1999 Mick McGahey, Scottish miners’ leader; 2001 John Prebble, historian, novelist and playwright; 2011 John Barry OBE, film music composer (notably James Bond films); 2012 Frederick Treves, British actor; 2013 Patty Andrews, singer (with Maxene and Laverne as The Andrews Sisters); Geraldine McEwan, British actress.