On this day: IRA arms ship The Eksund is intercepted

On this day in 1987 the IRA arms ship, the Eksund, was intercepted by French police en route from Libya, with 150-tonne cargo worth £3.7 million. Picture: AFP/Getty

701: John VII of Greece began his reign as Catholic Pope.

1470: Henry VI returned to the English throne after the Earl of Warwick defeated the Yorkists.

1485: King Henry VII was crowned at Westminster Abbey.

1534: The English parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which made Henry VIII head of the Church of England.

1580: Sir Francis Drake arrived at Plymouth in the Golden Hind after his circumnavigation of the world.

1739: Great Britian declared war on Spain, sparking the “War of Jenkins’ Ear”.

1772: Captain James cook arrived in Cape Town with his ship, Resolution.

1817: Simon Bolivar organised independent government in Venezuela.

1899: The Boers defeated Lt General White’s army at the Battle of Ladysmith.

1905: Aspirin pain reliever first went on sale in Britain.

1914: Battle of Ypres began.

1918: Czechoslovakia proclaimed an independent republic.

1922: Fascist march on Rome of Benito Mussolini’s black-shirted army. Their arrival gained him the dictatorship of Italy. On 30 October, 1934, Mussolini ordered all six-year-olds to join up for pre-army training.

1925: John Logie Baird, from his attic workshop in London, produced the first moving image on his television screen.

1932: Violence broke out at a rally of the unemployed in Trafalgar Square, London.

1938: Orson Welles’s radio version of HG Wells’s The War Of The Worlds on American radio caused widespread panic. News of the Martian invasion was so realistic that many listeners believed it.

1944: The 152nd Brigade of the Scottish Highland Infantry liberated Waalwijk in the Netherlands during the Second Waorld War.

1974: Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman in eighth round in Zaire to regain world heavyweight title.

1975: “Yorkshire Ripper” Peter Sutcliffe killed his first victim, Wilma McCann.

1987: IRA arms ship, The Eksund, was intercepted by French police en voyage from Libya, with 150-tonne cargo worth £3.7m.

1989: Leaked cabinet memo gave warned of 30,000 pit job losses and price rises after electricity privatisation.

1990: Tunnelling crews under the English Channel linked up for the first time when French workers drilled a two-inch pilot hole through to the British side of a service tunnel.

1992: A car bomb exploded yards from Downing Street after IRA gunmen kidnapped a taxi driver and forced him to drive with the device to Whitehall.

1994: The Most Rev Thomas Winning, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow, was made a cardinal.

1995: Quebec sovereignists narrowly lost a referendum for a mandate to negotiate independence from Canada (50.6 per cent to 49.4 per cent).

2009: The UK government’s chief adviser on drugs was forced to resign after he claimed ecstasy and LSD were less harmful than alcohol.

2012: The Walt Disney company bought Lucasfilm Ltd and its rights for Star Wars and Indiana Jones for $4.05 billion.

Juliet Stevenson CBE, actress, 59; Richard Alston CBE, choreographer, 67; Sir Ian McGeechan OBE, former Scotland rugby player and coach, 69; Diego Maradona, footballer and manager, 55; Grace Slick, rock singer (Jefferson Airplane), 76; Ivanka Trump, businesswoman and former model, 34; Courtney Walsh, cricketer, 53; Bob Wilson OBE, Scottish footballer and broadcaster, 74; Henry Winkler OBE, actor, 70; Timothy B Schmit, musician, singer-songwriter (The Eagles), 68; Chris Slade, drummer (AC/DC), 69.

Births: 1735 John Adams, second president of USA; 1821 Feodor Dostoievsky, novelist; 1839 Alfred Sisley, Impressionist painter; 1885 Ezra Pound, poet; 1893 Charles Atlas, bodybuilder; 1935 Michael Winner, film director.

Deaths: 1823 Edmund Cartwright, inventor of power loom and wool-combing machines; 1842 Allan Cunningham, Scottish poet and author; 1872 John Chubb, locksmith; 1910 Henri Dunant, philanthropist who inspired foundation of International Red Cross; 1959 Jim Mollison, Scottish aviator; 1979 Sir Barnes Wallis CBE, inventor of the bouncing bomb.