On this day: Fighting begins in Yugoslav civil war

On this day in 1991, tanks and helicopters clashed in the first fighting of the Yugoslav civil war. Picture: AFP/Getty

1450: Jack Cade, Irish-born physician, using the pseudonym Mortimer, led an insurrection march of 40,000 along Old Kent Road to London to protest about laws of Henry VI. The march began in May and ended in July with a battle on London Bridge. Cade was beheaded in Sussex on 11 July while trying to get abroad.

1693: The Ladies’ Mercury, the first magazine for women, was published.

1857: Massacre of Cawnpore, India, where British soldiers and male residents were executed after promise of safe conduct by the Indians.

1937: Duke of Windsor married Mrs Wallis Warfield Simpson in France.

1939: First transatlantic airline was inaugurated by Pan American Airways Boeing flying boat Yankee Clipper, between Newfoundland and Southampton, carrying 19 passengers.

1943: United States bombers attacked German-occupied city of Athens.

1944: Allied forces took Cherbourg, France.

1945: Charter establishing United Nations was signed in San Francisco by 50 nations.

1954: The world’s first atomic power station, at Obninsk near Moscow, went into production.

1961: Doctor Michael Ramsey was enthroned as the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury in Canterbury Cathedral.

1962: US declared it would not support any attempt by Chinese nationalists on Formosa to land forces on China mainland.

1967: Britain’s first cash dispenser was opened by Barclay’s Bank in Enfield.

1970: Alexander Dubcek was expelled from Czechoslovak Communist Party.

1982: Israel called for surrender of 6,000 Palestinian guerrillas trapped in West Beirut as death toll of invasion reached 10,000 Lebanese and Palestinians.

1990: The European Commission ordered that British Aerospace repay £44.4 million of “sweeteners” tied to the sale of the Rover Group.

1991: Tanks and helicopters clashed in first fighting of Yugoslav civil war as federal army units invaded Slovenia.

1993: The United States launched a missile attack on Iraqi intelligence posts in Baghdad in retaliation for an alleged plot to assassinate president George Bush. Eight people died.

1996: Actor Hugh Grant was arrested in Hollywood and charged with indecent conduct with a prostitute in a public place.

1996: John McCallion, MP, resigned from Labour’s front bench in protest over the party’s proposed referendum on a Scottish parliament.

2007: On his first day as prime minister after taking over from Tony Blair, Gordon Brown promised a “politics of change”, made sweeping Cabinet changes in which the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, and the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, lost their jobs, and started a radical reorganisation of Whitehall.

2012: The Queen and Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister Martin McGuinness shook hands for the first time. The meeting took place during the monarch’s two-day visit to Northern Ireland as part of her Diamond Jubilee tour.