On this day: Attenborough’s Gandhi won eight Oscars

On this day in 1982 Richard Attenboroughs film, Gandhi, won eight Oscars, the most ever won by a British film

1644: Sir Thomas Fairfax won the Battle of Selby in the English Civil War.

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

1689: William and Mary were crowned as joint sovereigns by the Bishop of London – the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to perform the ceremony.

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

1843: Britain separated Gambia from Sierra Leone as crown colony.

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

1894: Uganda was declared a British protectorate.

1899: Philippine islands were transferred from Spain to US.

1905: Albert Einstein announced his theory of relativity of time and space.

1919: Referendum in New Zealand declared against prohibition.

1929: Popeye made his first appearance as a supporting character in a cartoon strip in Hearst’s New York newspapers.

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

1953: Vietnamese insurgents renewed offensive in Laos.

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

1973: Martin Bormann, Nazi official pursued throughout world, was officially declared dead and taken off West Germany’s “most wanted” list.

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

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

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.

1993: German golfer Bernhard Langer won the Masters in Augusta, US, for the second time.

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

1996: Jessica Dubroff, seven, trying to become the youngest person to pilot an aircraft across the United States, died when her Cessna crashed shortly after take-off in Wyoming.

1997: Scotland caused a cricket upset when they qualified for the 1999 World Cup by finishing third in the ICC Trophy in Malaysia.

2000: Hansie Cronje was sacked as the South African cricket captain after admitting receiving between £6,600 and £10,000 from an Indian bookmaker during a one-day series between South Africa, Zimbabwe and England in February.

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

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

2007: Two bombings in the Algerian capital of Algiers left 33 people dead and 222 wounded.

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

BIRTHDAYS

Cerys Matthews, singer and DJ, 46; Ian Bell MBE, English cricketer, 33; Jeremy Clarkson, journalist and broadcaster, 55; Jennifer Esposito, actress, 42; Vincent Gallo, actor and director, 54; Jill Gascoine, actress, 78; Joel Grey, actor and singer, 83; Zöe Lucker, television actor, 41; Derek Martin, actor, 82; Gervase de Peyer, British clarinetist and conductor, 89; Peter Riegert, actor, 68; John Edward Hollister Montagu, 11th Earl of Sandwich, 72; Lisa Stansfield, singer, 49; Joss Stone, singer, 28.

ANNIVERSARIES

Births: 1770 George Canning, Conservative prime minister; 1755 James Parkinson, physician, discoverer of Parkinson’s Disease, which he first described in The Shaking Palsy in 1817; 1819 Sir Charles Hallé, pianist, conductor and founder of orchestra; 1893 John Nash, artist; 1914 Norman McLaren, film animator; 1958 Stuart Adamson, musician (Big Country) and songwriter.

Deaths: 1884 Charles Reade, novelist; 1890: John Merrick, subject of the film The Elephant Man; 1975 Josephine Baker, singer; 1987 Primo Levi, author who survived Auschwitz; 1987 Erskine Caldwell, American novelist and chronicler of poor white life in Deep South; 2001 Sir Harry Secombe, comedian and singer; 2007 Kurt Vonnegut, novelist (notably Slaughterhouse-Five); 2008 Joan Hunter Dunn, muse of John Betjeman and immortalised in his poem The Subaltern’s Love-song.