On this day: Hugh Grant fined over prostitute charge

Events, birthdays and anniversaries on 11 July.

1274: Robert the Bruce was born at Turnberry Castle.

1346: Charles IV of Luxembourg elected Holy Roman Emperor.

1533: Pope Clement VII excommunicated King Henry VIII.

1690: William III defeated James II at the Battle of the Boyne.

1739: Pluto moved from being the ninth to the eight most distant planet from the sun.

1776: Captain Cook sailed from Portsmouth in the Resolution, accompanied by the Discovery, on his third and last expedition.

1804: Aaron Burr. US vice-president, mortally wounded Alexander Hamilton, the former secretary of the Treasury, in a duel.

1810: Napoleonic Empire annexed Holland.

1812: US troops invaded Canada.

1818: John Keats visited the first home of Robert Burns in Alloway and wrote his sonnet Written In the cottage where Burns was born.

1848: Waterloo Station in London was opened.

1859: The chime of Big Ben in the clock tower of the Houses of Parliament was heard for the first time.

1881: The “ghost-ship” Flying Dutchman was sighted at 4am 50 miles off the Cape of Good Hope, by the crew of HMS Inconstant.

1882: The British fleet bombed Alexandria.

1892: The US patent office declared that the electric light carbon for the incandescent lamp was invented by JW Swan and not Thomas Edison.

1893: First cultured pearl was obtained by Kokichi Mikimoto.

1895: Auguste and Louis Lumiere, who invented film, demonstrated it to scientists.

1897: Solomon Andree left Spitsbergen in a balloon for the North Pole.

1900: Boer general De la Rey captured Scots Greys and Lincolns at the Battle of Silkaatsnek

1914: Babe Ruth made his debut for the Boston Red Sox.

1915: German cruiser Köningsberg sank off Dar-es-Salaam.

1921: Mongolia gained independence from China.

1924: Scottish athlete Eric Liddell won the Olympic 400 metres sprint in Paris.

1950: Puppets Andy Pandy, Teddy and Looby Loo first appeared on BBC television.

1962: The first transatlantic TV transmission took place via the satellite Telstar I.

1975: China’s great terracotta army was uncovered near the ancient capital of Xian.

1976: France performed a nuclear test on Muruora island.

1979: America’s Skylab I returned to earth after 34,981 orbits since its launch in 1973.

1981: Neva Rockefeller became the first woman ordered to pay her husband alimony.

1995: Actor Hugh Grant was fined £750 by a Los Angeles court and put on probation for two years when he admitted lewd conduct with a prostitute.

2006: 209 people were killed in a series of bomb attacks in Mumbai, India.

2010: Spain beat the Netherlands 1-0 in South Africa to win the World Cup for the first time.

2001: Neptune completed first orbit since its discovery in 1846.