On this day: Cassius Clay wins world heavyweight boxing title

Cassius Clay won the world heavyweight boxing championship in 1964, when Sonny Liston retired in round seven. Picture: Getty Images

1412: Bishop Henry Wardlaw formally incorporated masters and students at the centre of higher education at St Andrews as a “university,” although it was not officially inaugurated until 4 February, 1414, when Pope Benedict XIII’s Bull of Foundation was promulgated.

1570: Queen Elizabeth I of England was excommunicated by Pope Pius V.

1601: Earl of Essex was executed for treason.

1760: Robert Clive left India to return to England.

1791: Bank of United States founded.

1862: Greenbacks, American bank notes, were first issued during the Civil War by Abraham Lincoln.

1885: Germany annexed Tanganyika and Zanzibar.

1917: Liner Laconia torpedoed by Germans in the Atlantic, with the loss of 30 lives, many of them American.

1932: Adolf Hitler, who was born in Austria, was granted German citizenship.

1955: HMS Ark Royal, Britain’s largest aircraft carrier, was completed.

1958: The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was set up under the presidency of Lord Russell.

1964: Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) won the world heavyweight boxing championship, when Sonny Liston retired in the seventh round.

1969: Mariner 6 launched from Cape Kennedy for a Mars fly-by.

1972: Miners voted to accept new pay deal, thus lifting threat of continuing power cuts for the country.

1976: United States vetoed United Nations resolution deploring Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem.

1978: United States cautioned Soviet Union that continued Soviet military involvement in Ethiopia-Somalia conflict could impair Soviet-US relations.

1982: European Court of Human Rights ruled that British parents could refuse to allow children to be beaten at school.

1986: Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos resigned, brought down by a “people’s power” uprising, military revolt, and American pressure.

1987: Pro-Iranian Shia Muslims buried 23 militants killed by Syrian soldiers in Lebanon, and claimed they were deliberately massacred with axes and bayonets.

1988: Thousands demonstrated in Soviet Armenia in spite of directive to local authorities to restore order.

1990: At least 60 people killed in India as violence marred elections in eight states.

1990: Lithuanian elections gave Sajudis, popular front seeking independence from USSR, first 72 out of 90 seats.

1991: Warsaw Pact was formally dissolved after 36 years by meeting in Budapest.

2009: A Turkish Airlines plane crashed on landing at Amsterdam’s Schiphol international airport, killing nine people and injuring more than 80.

2009: Conservative leader David Cameron’s eldest son Ivan died in hospital. The six-year-old, had cerebral palsy and epilepsy.

ANNIVERSARIES:

Births: 1841 Pierre Auguste Renoir, French Impressionist painter; 1845 Sir George Reid, Scots-born Australian statesman; 1873 Enrico Caruso, operatic singer; 1901 Zeppo Marx, comedy actor; 1917 Anthony Burgess, author; 1934 Tony Lema, American golfer; 1943 George Harrison, Beatle, composer and film producer.

Deaths: 1601 Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex (executed for treason); 1723 Sir Christopher Wren, architect; 1805 William Buchan, Scots-born author of Domestic Medicine, best-selling medical book; 1914 Sir John Tenniel, cartoonist and illustrator of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.