On this day: Ark Royal plot | Theory of relativity

1564: Peace of Troyes ended war between England and France.

1677: William of Orange was defeated at Cassel, Germany, by Duke of Orleans.

1814: Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated unconditionally as emperor of France and was exiled to Elba by Treaty of Fontainebleau.

1855: London’s first six pillar boxes were installed, and were painted green.

1881: The first incandescent street lights were switched on, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

1882: Battle of the Braes in Skye between a posse of police and tenants of Lord MacDonald threatened with eviction.

1905: Albert Einstein announced his theory of relativity.

1941: Coventry Cathedral was destroyed and hundreds were killed in a night of saturation bombing by the Luftwaffe.

1951: United States president Harry S Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his command in the Far East for making political statements.

1961: Nigeria imposed total boycott on South African trade.

1961: Trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, captured by the Israelis in Latin America, opened in Jerusalem.

1981: IRA prisoner Bobby Sands won Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election on the 42nd day of his hunger strike in the Maze Prison.

1982: Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi won eight Oscars, the most ever won by a British film.

1989: Muslim anti-communists sealed off Afghanistan’s eastern city of Jalalabad.

1990: Customs at Middlesbrough seized consignment of cylinders believed to be designed for barrel of a 140-ton supergun for Iraq.

1991: United Nations Security Council announced a formal end to the Gulf War, accepting Iraq’s pledge that it would pay for war damages and scrap its weapons of mass destruction.

1994: Greek police said they had uncovered a terrorist plot to bomb the warship Ark Royal in the port of Piraeus, Athens.

2002: An attempted coup in Venezuela against president Hugo Chávez took place.

2006: Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran has successfully enriched uranium.

2011: Fifteen people were killed and 200 injured in a bomb attack on the Minsk Metro.

BIRTHDAYS

Jeremy Clarkson, journalist and broadcaster, 53; Ian Bell, English cricketer, 31; Jennifer Esposito, actress, 40; Vincent Gallo, American actor and director, 52; Jill Gascoigne, British actress, 76; Joel Grey, American actor and singer, 81; Zöe Lucker, British television actor, 39; Derek Martin, British actor (EastEnders), 80; Cerys Matthews, pop singer (Catatonia), 44; Gervase de Peyer, British clarinetist and conductor, 87; Peter Riegert, American actor, 66; John Edward Hollister Montagu, 11th Earl of Sandwich, 70; Lisa Stansfield, British singer (Blue Zone and Coldcut), 47; Joss Stone, British singer, 26.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1755 James Parkinson, discoverer of Parkinson’s Disease; 1901 Glenway Wescott, poet and novelist; 1908 Dan Maskell, tennis commentator; 1958 Stuart Adamson, rock singer and guitarist (Big Country).

Deaths: 1890: John Merrick, subject of the film The Elephant Man; 1934 Sir Gerald du Maurier, actor and manager; 1960 Sir Archibald McIndoe CBE, plastic surgeon; 1987 Primo Levi, author who survived Auschwitz; 2001 Sir Harry Secombe, comedian; 2007 Kurt Vonnegut, novelist.